The World Cup of Darts has begun with Lithuania and Portugal through to the second round in Austria with victories over Gibraltar and Hungary respectively.
The former duo started proceedings with Darius Labanauskas and Mindaugas Barauskas seeing off Craig Galliano and Justin Hewitt who impressed on their debuts in the tournament but fell in a 5-3 defeat.
It was a close start with the opening legs shared before Labanauskas hit a 180 and a 96 finish to go 2-1 up but Barauskas fluffed his lines on a 48 finish and Hewitt cleaned up to make it 2-2.
But Labanauskas attempted to put in a captain’s display for Lithuania with a 95 finish keeping their lead. A brilliant 70 finish saw Galliano continue to level it in a crucial impasse in the match.
But Lithuania came through in the end breaking throw to win 5-3 despite Labanauskas missing a big number for a shot at 101. Barauskas pinned double four to edge through after an entertaining and tense opener.
While for Portugal who came in due to a withdrawal for Singapore claimed an impressive 5-0 whitewash win with the duo of Jose de Sousa and Jose Marques acquitting themselves well to claim either a tie against USA or Austria next.
De Sousa anchored the Portuguese duo to the lead with an 80 checkout to begin the tie. He continued to show his class with a double eight checkout to claim a break of throw and go 2-0 up.
An 81 checkout was left and De Sousa went for the bull but missed it instead of setting it up but Marques continued their run with a 33 checkout to make it 3-0.
He hit a 140 and De Sousa brilliantly hit a double 18 in an 81 combo shot to leave 40 with Marques pinning double 10 to go one away. Marques hit 137 to leave 40 which De Sousa pinned to conclude a brilliant whitewash win.
World Cup of Darts 2020 schedule
Friday 6 November
Afternoon session (12:00 GMT)
Lithuania (87.23) 5-3 (77.17) Gibraltar
Portugal (85.4) 5-0 (73.32) Hungary
New Zealand (86.22) 5-2 (72.85) Denmark
Northern Ireland (87.78) 2-5 (94.51) Canada
Belgium v Czech Republic
Austria v USA
England v Philippines
Italy v Spain
Place comments
0 Comments
You are currently seeing only the comments you are notified about, if you want to see all comments from this post, click the button below.
Show all comments