“Already, two darts academies have opened up since December" - Darts starting to take India by storm after Nitin Kumar's World Darts Championship heroics

Amid the fancy dress, singing fans, and bright stage lights of the 2026 PDC World Darts Championship, Nitin Kumar delivered a moment in December 2025 that India will recount for years. The 40-year-old became the first Indian ever to win a match at the Alexandra Palace.

For Kumar, nicknamed “The Royal Bengal,” it was already his fifth appearance on the sport’s biggest stage. Four times he fell in the first round. Four times he went home without a win. But this time everything was different.

In a pulsating five-set duel he beat Dutchman Richard Veenstra 3-2. Veenstra, ranked world number 48 at the time, was the favorite. Yet it was Kumar who raised his arms at the end of the match.

Anyone who thinks Kumar spent months honing his technique with a team of coaches, physios, and sports psychologists is mistaken. The Indian’s reality is totally different from that of the established PDC pros.

Kumar works full-time as a marketing professional in Dubai. By day he is in the office; in the evening he stands at the dartboard in his living room. No luxury training facilities, no extensive support. Just discipline, passion, and immense mental resilience.

“Darts is such a game where the less mental stress you take, the better you always are going to play. And I just didn't think about it to be honest,” he said in conversation with The National. “That game that I won [against Veenstra], I didn't think about what people were thinking about me. It took me at least close to a month to get myself into that mental state."

That sounds easier than it is. Especially when you represent a country that had never won a match at the Worlds. Expectations were high, the pressure immense. “Where it's very different, where you're representing a country, you want to do your best, but then now it's just, 'I don't care what people think of me, I'm going to do my best anyway'.”

That calm proved crucial in the key moments against Veenstra. In a deciding fifth set, Kumar kept his nerves under better control. When the winning double landed, something burst free that he had suppressed for weeks.

“I felt like there was a lot of pressure that was on my shoulders, which I didn't feel it at the time because I was training myself not think about it,” he said. “But then towards the end of the game, I just kept feeling it. And I'm like, 'Alright, you're closer to victory right now.' This is the first time you're on uncharted territory. I've never been there. And it's something that was weird.”

Remarkably, Kumar is not a player who grew up in India. He moved to Dubai as a baby, where his father worked as an interior designer and his mother at the food company Al Kabeer. “I was here when I was one month old,” he says. “I just went to India just for my university and came back. I've been here all my life. I'm a Dubai boy.”

Darts entered his life at a young age through the city’s Indian community. At social gatherings, acquaintances had a dartboard at home. What began as relaxation grew into a serious passion. “My mum, of course, loved playing darts because it's a great stress reliever. You have three boys at home - so my dad, me, and my brother,” he laughs. “So for her, it was a great stress reliever. For my dad, it was a chance to go to the pub.”

Yet darts was not his first dream. Kumar was initially serious about basketball. He even returned to India to study and pursue his sporting ambitions. When that path closed, he focused on a career in communications and marketing.

“I had a very sort of creative mind and I like to think out of the box,” he said. “They let me do what I wanted to. And in that way, I'm really happy actually. I was lucky in that way. I was blessed.”

What sets Kumar apart from many other Worlds participants is his daily routine. While the elite can train ten hours a day, he must schedule his practice after an eight to nine-hour workday. “Whenever I'm back home, I need to practice at least an hour and a half or two hours every single day,” he says. “Apart from that, we have three nights where we actually play darts over here in the league."

He is acutely aware of the gap to the world’s best. “So if I practice a whole week, an hour and a half or two hours, I practice 10 hours in a whole week while they practice 10 hours in a day. So I'm always fighting a losing battle in that way.”

His next big goal is to earn a PDC Tour Card via Q-School. That would officially bring him onto the professional circuit.

The impact of his win went beyond his personal success. In India, his Worlds victory sparked a wave of enthusiasm. “Well, there have been a lot of waves in India,” he said. “Already, two darts academies have opened up since December. There's another one opening next week. So people are taking it very seriously. They have a lot of youngsters in India."

Yet he also feels a responsibility. Because he lives in Dubai, he cannot mentor young Indian talents on a daily basis. “I sort of feel a little guilty that if I was in India, I could have taught them a little better. They'd always have access to me so I can teach them. There are lots of kids who can be led in a wrong way. Because if you're a professional darts player, you've got to think like a professional darts player. You've got to practice like one.”

He uses a telling comparison to explain the mental side of darts. “The highest score on a dartboard is 180,” he says. “You wake them at 3 o'clock in the morning while they're half asleep and tell them to hit a 180. Give them 10 minutes, they'll hit one. I tell the same people to do that in front of screaming fans behind and then you're talking about missing by a millimetre to missing by an inch and that is something that can't be taught. So this is what I have learnt, ideally, how to handle that.”

Despite being 40, Kumar feels nowhere near the end of his development. On the contrary. “Of course, ambition is always to be a world champion. You've got to shoot for the stars.”