2021 PDC World Darts Championship schedule: Monday afternoon session including Van Duijvenbode and Aspinall

Monday, 28 December 2020 at 08:30

Dirk van Duijvenbode and Nathan Aspinall will be aiming to build on thrilling opening wins at the PDC World Darts Championship.

With Peter Wright having been given the chop, losing spectacularly to Gabriel Clemens, the intrigue levels have been ratcheted up a notch at the Alexandra Palace. Van Duijvenbode and Aspinall, like Jose de Sousa, are favourites on paper. But this World Darts Championship is reminding us all to stay on our toes.

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There's a developing theme at this year's Worlds, of players with a lot of promise but a frustrating major record starting to put things right. Krzysztof Ratajski and Gabriel Clemens have cut a swathe through this tournament as they've never done before. Joe Cullen won a match that he would've lost a year earlier.

Jose de Sousa is following in those footsteps. For all his brilliance, originally on the floor and now on the stage, the World Championship has been the lock to which the Portuguese seems to have just found the key. But a decent win over Ross Smith means nothing if he can't dethrone the King.

Mervyn King kicked off his World Darts Championship with basically a ton average, with a bit chipped off during a third set blip that almost saw Max Hopp scrap his way back in. All the pieces are fitting together for King right now, but he knows De Sousa will likely put pressure on his throw in a way Hopp couldn't. On paper, this is the tie of the day.

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Go back a year, and there's no way you could've predicted Dirk van Duijvenbode would take on Adam Hunt for a place in the PDC World Darts Championship's Last 16. You definitely couldn't have said that it wouldn't feel that strange. Hunt, for all of Lisa Ashton's wasted chances and Jamie Hughes' overall lacklustre performance, has played well and kept his cool nicely.

This is a brand new challenge, however. Van Duijvenbode has sometimes had trouble keeping his cool, but in a tense decider against Rob Cross, he teamed up with the treble 19 to serve up a leg that wrestled the win away from the former world champion. The Aubergenius is plotting a course for the depths of this championship, and if he corrects an uncharacteristically poor double conversion rate, it'll be very hard for Hunt to stop him.

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Nathan Aspinall simply doesn't play in boring matches at the PDC World Darts Championship. A second round meeting with Scott Waites didn't suggest fireworks, but the organisers of the traditional New Year's spectacular on the Thames will do well to match an explosive encounter up in Muswell Hill. The important thing is the Asp survived, with a third straight semi-final (and possibly more) still on his to-do list.

This is Vincent van der Voort's 20th World Championship. The story of the first 19 is one of early promise - sometimes even brilliance - which comes to an abrupt end. A player of his quality could well have posted better than three quarter-final exits (one in the BDO, two in the PDC). He's in a tricky quarter, but the Dutch Destroyer has the ingredients to beat it.

These two have no problems with scoring, so it's really about stealing legs and sets wherever a chance emerges. Will Aspinall and Van Der Voort, who had to claw victory away from Ron Meulenkamp, get drawn into another long engagement? They'll hope not. We'll hope so.