WIZARD OF ODDS
Long shot Rob out to repeat history
BACK in February, Rob Cross was priced at a massive 125-1 to win the William Hill World Darts Championship
Turn back time to January 1990 and a man by the name of Phil Taylor was priced at 125-1 to win the BDO World Darts Championship. Tonight the pair will go head-to-head for the first time on the stage of the Alexandra Palace in a final, on the first day of 2018, which will remain one of the ® sports stories of the year. We all know what happened in 1990 – Taylor beat his mentor Eric Bristow 6-1 in the final.
And something else also happened in that year. Eight months after Taylor lifted the trophy, Cross was born, on September 21.
Taylor won on his world championship debut, so could history be about to repeat itself for the modern day 125-1 man?
Cross said: “I never expected this rise. I am just a normal working boy.”
Incredibly, not until November’s Grand Slam in Wolverhampton had Cross even met Taylor.
He said: “I got a photo with him. It sounds sad now, doesn’t it? He did say to me, ‘You and me in the final in the Worlds’.
Inspiration
“I have watched Phil since being a young boy of around 12, when I fell in love with the game. He is an inspiration.”
But Cross is not here by luck. He reached the quarter-final of the Grand Slam, he was runner-up in the European Championship and made the Players Championship semi-finals.
He has become the new star of world darts. A former electrician, he joined the professional PDC tour on February 1.
Cross has progressed through the ranks so quickly that he started the championships at Ally Pally as world No.20 and his odds, days before the event, had dropped to 14-1.
And in the early hours of yesterday, with a dart soaring magnificently into double eight, Cross beat the defending champion and world No.1 Michael van Gerwen 6-5 in a sudden death shoot-out after an extraordinary semi-final.
“Friends locally put money on at 125-1 and one guy got 250-1,” said Cross “He is sitting on a pretty portion. Knowing him, he would have put on quite a bit. I believe in my own ability. I feel I can be better than what I am.
“I have always been able to throw darts but since having three kids and the responsibility, I know what it is like to graft for money. It changes you as a person. “Hopefully when I finish darts I can give my family a better life. I never play for money but the more you can bring in for them... I am not here for the fame.” It truly is the hottest ticket in sport, because as the The Power by Snap! booms out, it will be the last time as a professional that 16-time world champion Taylor, 57, will make his way to the stage.