Electrician Cross lights up the sporting year by killing The Power
THE new year wasn’t even a day old when it already delivered what might be the sports story of 2018: Rob Cross winning the PDC World Championship final. The 27-year old beat - no, hammered - 16time world champion Phil Taylor in Monday night’s final after what can only be described as a meteoric rise in the sport. Cross, who worked as an electrician until very recently, isn’t a full year playing darts professionally but this week he is the new world champion, earning £400,000 for his couple of week’s work, and spectacularly pooping on The Power’s retirement party.
Although Cross was fifth favourite with most bookies coming into the tournament before Christmas, he was still just the 20th ranked seed and there was little by way of strong form through his first four rounds at the Alexandra Palace to suggest a future world champions was on stage. His 6-5 semi-final win over defending champion Michael Van Gerwen was a game for the ages and signalled his arrival as a player of serious quality. Two days later Cross helped himself to the Dutch man’s title with minimum fuss in a 7-2 rout of Taylor, who had announced that this would be his last World Championship appearance. Incidentally, this was Cross’s first World Championship.
As unexpected victories go, what Cross did this week ranks right up there with the best of them. Yes, when you break it down he struggled past four relative unknowns to set up that epic semi-final win over Van Gerwen - who did have a dart to win the match - and then beat Taylor who despite playing exceptionally well to reach the final is, nevertheless, a champion well past his best and looked every bit his 57 years on Monday night. But it’s the back story that makes Cross’s achievement remarkable.
Less than two years ago Cross was a full-time electrician and part-time darts player, more concerned with providing for his family than thinking about sharing a World Final stage with a man who won his first World Championship title (BDO) in 1990, the year Cross was born.
Cross couldn’t even qualify for the 2016 BDO World Championship but through a series of almost accidental events he qualified for and reached the last 32 of the UK Open. That result meant much more oche time for Cross through 2016, which started with him watching Van Gerwen beat Gary Andersen in last year’s World Championship Final on television, still ranked an amateur player. To comprehend that less than 12 months later he is now world champion - having beaten two of the best players the game has ever produced - is akin to Huddersfield Town coming into the Premier League last August and winning the title next May. It simply isn’t meant to happen.
Twenty-four hours into 2018 and a young, unknown sparky from the south of England has already lit up the sporting landscape for the year.