shock second-round exit to hosts Germany last year<\/a> cast doubt over the partnership, but they averaged more than 104 to overpower the Dutch.<\/p>\n“I’m absolutely delighted – that’s the best we have played all tournament,” Littler told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“That’s what we needed to do. We can’t do it every game, its hard. There have been challenges but we got the job done.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t do anything wrong last year, we just came up against a better team. This year we had to win together, not on our own.<\/p>\n
“I’m proud of us – we won together.”<\/p>\n
The world’s top four players produced a tight contest early on that stayed with throw until Littler found double 10 to break just before the first interval.<\/p>\n
England held after the break before Humphries took out 87 to break once more and establish a three-leg lead.<\/p>\n
From that point on the Premier League champion and runner-up did not look like surrendering their lead – Littler hit tops to extend the advantage to 6-2 as England’s average crept up to 114, though Van Veen hit back with a timely maximum as the Dutch held with a 14-dart leg.<\/p>\n
Humphries recovered from a slight wobble – his failed set-up left Littler needing and missing a bullseye to break – to hit double four to put the duo 7-3 up going into the second break.<\/p>\n
The Dutch were handed a lifeline when Littler failed to take out 78, affording Van Veen a 64 checkout to cut the deficit before Van Gerwen showed similar composure to stick with throw.<\/p>\n
But they knew the game was up when after hitting a remarkable 174, Van Gerwen bust on an attempted eight checkout and England broke.<\/p>\n
That led to England needing 41 to win, and Humphries secured the world title – his second and the first of Littler’s career – with nine, 16 and double eight.<\/p>\n
“Michael [van Gerwen] was unbelievable tonight – he is back and playing unbelievable darts,” Humphries told Sky Sports. <\/p>\n
“We knew we needed to take our chances. You give Holland any hope and they’ll take it away from you.<\/p>\n
“We were a bit poor against Wales but we ran with the luck we had in that game.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England won the World Cup of Darts for a record-extending sixth time as Luke Littler and Luke Humphries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-638891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}