By the end, the room had gone still and quiet. The air was warm and smelled faintly of spilled pints. The chants of “One Stephen Bunting” had long since died away, and all that was left was one Stephen Bunting: three darts in his hand and no more tricks up his sleeve. No place left to run.
And so as James Hurrell pinned tops to win 4-3 and claim the biggest victory of his life, there was just the merest whiff of anticlimax to it all: a seismic shock that also somehow felt like the most natural thing in the world. The crowds dispersed with barely a murmur. Hurrell packed up his darts and left the stage: not overawed or overcome, but bearing the immense calmness of a man who had seen this all coming in advance.
Perhaps he was the only one who had. Certainly nothing the 41-year-old from the Cotswolds has achieved in his two years on tour suggested he was capable of this performance, on this stage, in this tournament. There was a promising run to the last 16 of the Players Championship finals last month. Some promising runs on the floor. An assured disposal of Dirk van Duijvenbode in the second round here. But he was the world No 63 for a reason.
And yet time and again, as Bunting pulled outstanding finishes out of thin air, as the Bullet tried to surf the familiar wave of emotion and noise that has turned far more accomplished opponents to rubble, he found Hurrell’s stout frame blocking his path, relentlessly outscoring him on the inner ring, utterly unflustered by the size of his task. In truth Hurrell destroyed the world No 4 here, outscoring him by 98 to 91 on the averages, winning 18 legs to 12, ultimately a little irritated that such a dominant performance had still required a deciding set.
“Should have won four-nil,” he said afterwards, and it didn’t sound like boasting or bragging, just a statement of fact. He plays Martin Schindler or Ryan Searle for a place in the quarter-finals, but on this form he would give anyone in the world a game. “I’ve got a different mindset these days,” he said. “Not feeling no nerves or anything. I’m so confident in my game. I’m not going anywhere.”
But for a while it was hard to see exactly where Hurrell was going. Eight years ago he woke in the night feeling ill and vomited blood into the sink, a symptom of the twisted bowel that would ultimately require an emergency life-saving operation and put him out of the sport for more than two years. The man who emerged on the other side of surgery was a more driven and focused player, determined to make up for lost time. Darts is full of players like Hurrell: richly talented, quietly plugging away, biding their time, waiting for the rich vein of form that will catapult them to greatness.
For Bunting, an ignominious end to a frustrating year. Brand Bunting is as strong as ever: the social media profile, the electrifying walk-on, the fans and the fame. It may yet be enough to keep his spot in next year’s Premier League. But in recent months there has also been a real fragility to him, most evident when he broke down after his second-round win over Nitin Kumar, evidence of a game and a mindset that for whatever reason were not quite right.
This was a meek and fully deserved exit: still littered with micro-moments of brilliance but lacking in both consistency and conviction. He averaged just 84 in losing the first set, saved the second with a miraculous 161 finish, won the third with a 121 finish and the sixth with a 100 checkout. But eventually his well of miracles ran dry. The songs went quiet. The belief drained from the crowd, and eventually it drained from him too.
Beyond Hurrell, Bunting’s exit has two main beneficiaries in the top half of the draw: Luke Littler and Jonny Clayton. Not that the world No 1 looked in any need of help during his 4-0 demolition of Mensur Suljovic in the night’s final game. Clayton, meanwhile, is now the only remaining top-10 player in his section after coming through a nervy deciding set against the much-improved Niels Zonneveld of the Netherlands.
Next Clayton will play the debutant Andreas Harrysson of Sweden, who looked extremely impressive in beating Ricardo Pietreczko of Germany 4-2. With his straggly grey beard and showman’s flourish, Harrysson is one of those cult heroes who seems to come alive on the Alexandra Palace stage. By day the 50-year-old from Målilla works in a factory making window frames. By night he toils in the dream factory, and if he beats Clayton he will automatically claim a 2026 tour card and fulfil his lifelong ambition of playing full-time professional darts.