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Darts may be a niche sport in India but it continues to grow in popularity thanks to players like Nitin Kumar, Ashfaque Sayed, and Prakash Jiwa who have all competed at an elite professional level over the last decade. Kumar will be hoping to make an impact at this year’s PDC World Championships which gets underway in London in December having confirmed his qualification back in September. The player known as the “Royal Bengal”, thanks to the tiger motif worn on his shirt, reached the last 96 at least year’s event and will be hoping to go further this time around.
A great and much needed win at the PDC India Qualifiers.. Back to practice now for the World Championships.. Will do my best.. #Targetdarts #8flight #TeamsID #DAB #IDC pic.twitter.com/kbr4BTYizf
— Nitin Kumar (@nitintrbkumar) September 23, 2019
Huge pool of potential talent
A strong performance from Kumar would help to boost the profile of the sport even further in a country that boasts a population of over 1.3 billion people. If darts gained serious traction in India, it might not take long for the All India Darts Association to uncover more top-level talent.
Favorites for the 2020 PDC World Championships
While Kumar will be priced as a rank outsider heading into the tournament, reigning champion Michael van Gerwen will start as the 11/10 favorite in the darts betting. The Dutchman is gunning for his fourth world title since first claiming the crown with a win over Peter Wright back in 2014. He has been the dominant force in the game since the decline and subsequent retirement of 16-time former world champion Phil Taylor in 2018. No player has won more PDC Pro Tour events than van Gerwen.
Rob Cross was the last man to beat Taylor in a world final and will head to Alexandra Palace as the second favorite. The 29-year-old burst on the scene in 2017 to claim the world crown and followed that up with World Matchplay and European Championship titles in 2019. He is currently ranked No. 2 in the world.
Phil Taylor comeback rumors
Phil Taylor himself has recently talked of a return to the oche and is currently experimenting with a new set of darts that have interchangeable points. The idea of the technology, known as “Swiss points”, is that a player who is throwing a little high or low can quickly switch to a longer or shorter point to compensate during a match. If the 59-year-old does come out of retirement, it will be one of the big talking points in the sporting world. Taylor dominated the sport for nearly two decades winning, 16 world titles between 1995 and 2013. He reached four other finals, including his last appearance in 2018.
Other contenders
Also in the running this year will be 2014 finalist Peter Wright and two-time former champion Gary Anderson from Scotland. Anderson has reached three finals in a row between 2015 and 2017 and is currently ranked No. 4 in the world. Last year’s beaten finalist and current world No. 3, Michael Smith, is also just behind Wright, Anderson, and Gerwyn Price in the latest betting odds.
