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From 1-3 to 4-3. Luke Humphries made a phenomenal comeback at the Darts World Cup on Thursday evening. The top favorite had to go all the way against Ricardo Pietreczko.
‘Pikachu’ actually had the support of the audience behind it. Many Germans had already traveled to London and so home player Humphries was met with a lot of boos. When ‘Cool Hand Luke’ finally hit double 10 for the win, he turned to the crowd. With his hands behind his ears he shouted several times: “I can’t hear you now!”
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Pietreczko stood there and looked at it. Afterwards, the German admitted that the crowd made it very difficult for his opponent and that he had every respect for Humphries for not reacting during the match itself. ‘Pikachu’ did that himself earlier this year, during the Grand Slam of Darts in a match against the English scouch Beau Greaves. It earned him even more boos and a lot of hate reactions. The fact that Pietreczko played very calmly against Nathan Aspinall a match later only added fuel to the fire.
The previously so popular German – who booked his very first tournament victory this year – suddenly became enemy number one in England. To make matters worse, Pietreczko had to compete against Japan’s Mikuru Suzuki. Fortunately for him, there were already many Germans in ‘Ally Pally’ at that time.
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Humphries couldn’t resist taking a stab after his comeback. “Ricardo should never complain about the audience again,” said the Englishman. “Because I just went through one of the hardest ones ever. When he played against Beau and Nathan it wasn’t as bad as it is now. He can never complain again, because this was ten times worse than what he had to experience. He can learn from this too. When the crowd is against him, he just has to do what I did: only react after the match. Then you can give them back some of what they gave you throughout the match. There were just three people whistling constantly, with every throw. Unfortunately you can’t do anything about it because they have bought their tickets. But they did get what they deserved in the end.”
‘Cool Hand Luke’ did receive some comments for his response. But in England they immediately see fate favorable to their compatriot. Last year, Michael Smith came back from a similar situation against, yes, the German Martin Schindler: from 1-3 to 4-3. Later ‘Bully Boy’ won his first world title among the pros. “I do believe in fate,” Humphries laughed at the press conference.
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