Stephen Bunting showed his good side at the Winmau World Masters last weekend. 'The Bullet' not only played a good tournament, he also drew attention to himself with a nice sporting gesture.
Bunting played Danny Noppert in the quarterfinals of the Winmau World Masters on Sunday afternoon. In recent years, 'The Bullet' has become one of the absolute crowd favorites in the sport of darts, and Bunting was widely applauded during the match.
However, the fans turned against his opponent Noppert when the Dutchman was about to win the match. The moment 'The Freeze' was about to dock to throw his match darts, there was a lot of cheering and whistling from the venue. However, Bunting made an arm gesture to the crowd to stop that and most of the fans acceded to 'The Bullet's' request, after which Noppert took the win.
''I should have told them to shout a bit more to be honest,'' Bunting joked afterwards to ITV about his sporting gesture. ''No of course, it is a respectful sport. Danny and I are really good friends and if he's got a chance to win the match, I'm happy for him.''
Noppert could appreciate Bunting's sporting response and praised his English opponent. "He played so well the last couple of months. He's such a tough player to beat. When I was starting in the BDO, he was Number One and I was looking up to Stephen. We are all friends with each other."