Sid Waddell told the armchair enthusiasts that Deller was “not just an underdog, he’s an underpuppy” and asked: “Can Deller do the unthinkable and beat Bristow in the world final?”
For Deller, who threw spring-loaded darts designed to avoid bounce-outs, reaching the final, a fine achievement for a qualifier, wasn’t enough.
He was there to win the World Championship and predicted a 6-3 victory.
He blew six darts at a double to make it happen…
Earlier, the match had swung this way – Deller led 3-1 – then the other – Bristow levelled at 3-3 – then back again.
Deller won the seventh and eighth sets, taking him into a 5-3 lead and just one set away from the World Championship.
In the ninth set, Deller was 64 points away, then 18, then eight, then four…
Six darts at a match-winning double were missed and Deller spent the next two sets “shaking my head. I should have been world champion.”
Ever the opportunist, Bristow showed why commentator Dave Lanning described him as “a burglar” on the oche.
In his youth, Bristow had burgled houses and the North London ne’er-do-well-turned-king-of-darts brought his street cunning to darts. Knowing Deller was vulnerable, his mind elsewhere, Bristow smoothly upped his average by a few points and plundered five legs without reply while Deller chewed over those missed match-winning chances.
When he claimed the opening leg of the 11th and deciding set, Bristow led for the first time in the match and that realisation, the possibility of defeat, snapped Deller out of his ruminations. Either he started throwing his best darts again or he would lose – and he hadn’t come here to lose.
The spell broken, he rediscovered his fluency to break back immediately with a 121 checkout, then hold his throw to leave Bristow needing to do the same to save the match.
Bristow got to a finish first in that fourth leg.
He took aim at 121 with Deller also on a three-dart finish, 138.
Bristow threw 17, then treble 18 and with 50 left, everyone zoomed in on the bull’s-eye. Everyone apart from Bristow, that is. Rather than go for the bull’s-eye to win the leg, Bristow was so sure Deller wouldn’t take out 138 for the match, he threw 18 to leave his favourite double 16.
This wasn’t hubris. Bristow had thought it all through. He reckoned Deller’s mental mastication – “He could have beaten me earlier, he had his chance” – and the awkwardness of the 138 finish – “it was all over the place” – guaranteed he would come back to the oche and have three darts at his favourite double.
Years later, he would think otherwise, saying the pressure would have been greater on Deller had he been faced with a smaller finish. “If he had 58 left he would have been standing behind me thinking: ‘I’ve got two more darts for the title,’” he said, but still, nobody, not just Bristow, really expected Deller to take out 138.
“He’s banking on Deller not doing this!” cried Waddell excitedly and when Deller’s first dart landed in treble 20, there was a chance Bristow had got it wrong.
Deller had taken out big finishes in the earlier rounds of the championship and knew what he was doing. “I didn’t stop,” he said. “There was no way I was going to think about it.”
Had he thought about the importance of the darts he was throwing, his arm would surely have twitched, so Deller ignored the crowd’s growing excitement when he nailed treble 18 and coolly switched across the board to fire his final dart into double 12.
“I have never seen anything like it in my life,” said Waddell while Deller shook his fists above his head in sheer joy.
“It was perhaps the next best thing that could happen to me,” Deller would tell Darts World, “… next to playing for Ipswich Town.”
