"Ricardo can never complain about a crowd again" - Luke Humphries overcomes Pietreczko and pro-German Ally Pally crowd to keep World Championship dream alive

Luke Humphries survived a real thriller in the third round of the World Darts Championship. 'Cool Hand Luke' came back from a 3-1 deficit against Ricardo Pietreczko to still prevail 4-3.

Humphries had to deal with bad luck just before the start, as the tip of one of his arrows broke off and he had to play with a spare set. "I was absolutely rubbish there, there's no denying that. The point breaking before I started wasn't the best thing. Playing with a different set of darts, it obviously didn't work for me as you could see on the stage. I tried changing flights and stuff but nothing was working it's the set of darts that won three majors for me, so yeah, it wasn't easy."

During the match, the vast German contingent that had travelled to the Ally Pally were making their voices heard in support of Pietreczko. "99% of the crowd was against me. It was quite a tough as welI dealing with it, that was one of the toughest games I've ever been involved in," he explains. "Ricardo can never complain about a crowd again."

Humphries will take on Joe Cullen in the next round. "It will have to be much better than what I showed today," he said. "I can't play like this. I won't. It's pretty simple, someone will catch me out and they'll beat me but now I can go back to my original darts, who knows, I could reignite and start playing really well."

"I came here brimming with confidence and that's definitely not gone. Now it just comes down to picking up my top level again and then I am confident that I will be fine against Joe."