Reason for no trademark dance from Peter Wright on walk-on confirmed prior to Jermaine Wattimena clash

Peter Wright forewent the usual trademark dance on his walk-on and harked back to the days of lockdown with elbow bumps for the crowd at the PDC World Darts Championship. But there is a reason why.

Wright has been suffering with a chest infection in recent days prior to taking on Jermaine Wattimena who no doubt will feel even more confident about his chances given 'Snakebite' being under the weather.

Wattimena has been in the form of his life as of late and reached the European Championship final. he breezed past Stefan Bellmont and James Wade in his opening two rounds with Wattimena now emerging as a big time player.

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For Wright, it is certainly not the news he needed. He has been struggling with form woes for some time but he managed to get past Wesley Plaisier in his first match. He broke down emotionally afterwards.

But despite that emphatically said form is temporary, class is permanent. Albeit he also predicted Barney would beat Luke Humphries and it is Nick Kenny facing 'Cool Hand Luke' instead shortly.

"Hopefully class is permanent, form is temporary. Hopefully his (Wattimena)'s form is temporary and after Christmas he comes back and plays rubbish. It's nice to see Jermaine play some fantastic darts, I'm happy for him. I've got to step up loads to compete with him," he said.

"Luke Humphries and Luke Littler drive me on as I know I can still compete with them. I actually know I can be better than them. Gary (Anderson) spurs me on as well. These little old guys can still do it. I believe Barney will beat Luke (Humphries) and then me and Barney will have the best game ever you've seen on that stage. Barney get your finger out."

Despite the illness though, Wright has started well winning the opening set albeit ending it with a coughing fit showing himself to be firmly under the weather post Christmas. How will it affect him going forward, time will tell.

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