2021 PDC World Darts Championship final preview: Gary Anderson vs Gerwyn Price

Gary Anderson and Gerwyn Price meet with the PDC World Darts Championship title up for grabs.

The 2021 PDC World Darts Championship is flying solo for the first time ever, meaning a unified world champion will be crowned on Sunday night - until amateur darts gets back on track, anyway. Anderson has lifted the Sid Waddell Trophy twice, while it's Price's first final. Even for two players in the uppermost echelons of the game, the £500,000 top prize is one almighty motivator, not to mention their name being etched in darting history.

Gerwyn Price has been the best player in world darts this season. That's hard to deny. It's also hard to deny that, until Saturday, we hadn't seen anything close to his best darts. The win over Jamie Lewis was painful, he clung on by his fingertips against Brendan Dolan, and even he was surprised at the lack of scrutiny from Mervyn King, before Daryl Gurney gave it in spades.

But the semi-final win over Stephen Bunting - a win Price freely admitted would've been beyond his capabilities a couple of years ago - showed why he's the person to beat in darts right now. For everything Bunting threw at him, Price was simply better. The scoring was better, and the slew of ton-plus checkouts were spectacular. The Welshman looks more secure on doubles now than at any point in this tournament, particularly his trusted tops and tens.

What we've seen in the past couple of years is Price gaining a lot of respect (much of it begrudging - he's yet to win over quite a few people), and showing the nerve to win some important tournaments. This is the very biggest. To become Wales' fifth world champion after Leighton Rees, Richie Burnett, Mark Webster and Wayne Warren, would be a massive deal.

There's also the small matter of becoming world number one, knocking the previously indomitable Michael van Gerwen off his perch. It would close the biggest chapter (so far) of the fairytale story of a rugby player packing in the day job and going for broke in a new sport before, quite possibly, ascending into darting royalty.

Gary Anderson, unlike his opponent, didn't picture himself getting here. He's been talking up his 2022 World Darts Championship chances so much that reaching the final a year in advance seems to have been a real shock for him. This is the fifth January in which he's lined up in an Ally Pally final, winning in 2015 and 2016 but losing in 2011 and 2017. He's not exactly in the form that saw him win 17 successive World Championship matches in that glorious mid-decade spell, but he continues to win games.

Anderson's zenith was in the quarter-final win over Dirk van Duijvenbode; he didn't feel the 100 average and 37 per cent checkout success rate in the semi-final against Dave Chisnall held a candle to it. It was better than the 3-2 win an angry Anderson stumbled to against Mensur Suljovic, and was more encouraging that routine wins over the overawed Madars Razma and wasteful Devon Petersen.

And so here he is, a man who could easily be resting up ahead of some long-needed medical treatment on a leg problem, but is instead fighting for the biggest prize in darts. The Flying Scotsman is a serial winner, and as it's almost two years since he last won a PDC major, it's about time he got back on top of the podium.

The head-to-head is extremely close, with Anderson having won eight of their 15 previous meetings, but two of Price's seven were their most recent games, both in the Premier League. Surprisingly, they've only met once beyond the quarter-final stage of any competition; that was in the infamous Grand Slam final where Price landed himself both in the history books and the DRA's bad books. Price will be as boisterous as ever, so the question is whether Anderson will rise to it, as he did to Mensur Suljovic's glacial gamesmanship.

Regardless of who becomes the world champion, it's worth taking a moment to recognise this as the culmination of a wonderful, quality-laden, often bonkers World Darts Championship. When so much of the world has been locked down, isolated and divided, the cosmopolitan celebration of darts at the Alexandra Palace must be appreciated more than ever, even if fans could only make it for one night.

You're spoiled for choice when considering the best moment of these Championships. Perhaps it's Dave Chisnall eviscerating Michael van Gerwen. There's Waites vs Campbell, Peter Wright's Grinch getup, Ratajski's big break, the return of Stephen Bunting, #tablegate, a famous Paul Lim win, the Danny Baggish run, Deta Hedman, Portela's pioneering victory, a James Wade nine-darter, Edward Foulkes coming from Japan to dish out a shock, Laura Woods poking fun at Wayne Mardle at every opportunity - maybe even this final. Once again, the PDC World Darts Championship has ended the old year and started the new with tungsten triumph.

And we're another day closer to the World Cup of Darts being back. Hooray!

Gary Anderson v Gerwyn Price