Luke Humphries slams his ‘crap’ darts as World No2 admits he is sick of playing like a train then falling apart

Luke Humphries ground out a 6-5 victory over Krzysztof Ratajski at the Poland Darts Open on Saturday night but walked off stage in no mood to celebrate, delivering a blunt assessment of his own performance that was rather at odds with the result.

The world number two needed a final-leg decider to beat the home favourite in Kraków’s EXPO arena, having led 5-2 before Ratajski and a raucous, partisan crowd dragged him back to 5-5 and into a shootout. Humphries prevailed, as he usually does in the big moments, but his post-match candour was striking.

“That was really rubbish from myself tonight,” he said. “Hopefully tomorrow I come back a different player and play like I have been.”

The critique extended beyond the result against Ratajski. Humphries described a pattern that has been plaguing him across his matches this season — the feeling that he can produce elite darts for stretches, only to watch the level drain away at precisely the wrong moment.

“My game at the moment, I am starting off like a train in every game I play, playing the best darts out of anybody,” he said. “Then, all of a sudden, I am playing the worst darts. It’s just a strange scenario for me. I am playing unbelievably, then playing crap.”

He offered no neat explanation for the inconsistency, only a frank acknowledgement that it needs addressing. “I don’t really know why. I am trying my best. I started off so well on the ProTour when I won it, but then it would drain out. I need to work out why that is happening.”

The setting did not help. Humphries played the match amid near-constant booing and whistling from a Kraków crowd firmly behind their national hero, with referee Kirk Bevins intervening at one point to quieten the arena during Humphries’ throw. ‘Cool Hand Luke’ has built his reputation at least partly on the ability to insulate himself from external noise, but he acknowledged on Saturday that the conditions made that harder than usual.

“It’s just sometimes, when you get crowds that unfortunately don’t give you that fair game that you want, it’s hard for me to perform,” he said. He was careful to note that the hostile atmosphere was a double-edged sword for Ratajski too. “It probably put a lot of pressure on Krzysztof at the end there. He probably tried too hard. The crowd were fantastic to him, but I am just glad to win, to be honest.”

The broader frustration in Humphries’ words went beyond one match. “I am sick of being where I am,” he said — a loaded statement from a man who, on paper, is second in the world, a former world champion, and among the most decorated players on the circuit. What he meant, clearly, is that he is sick of the gap between what he knows he is capable of and what is currently making it out of his hand and onto the board with any consistency.

It is a strange problem to have at this level, and Humphries is far from the first elite player to wrestle with it. The ability to sustain performance across an entire match — not just race into big leads, but close them out — is one of the markers that separates the very best from the merely excellent. Humphries won a World Championship not so long ago partly because he possessed precisely that quality. The fact that it currently eludes him at key moments is, given everything else he has going for him, a solvable problem. But it is clearly one that is weighing on him.

The immediate task is Boris Krcmar on Sunday afternoon, after the Croatian’s impressive 6-4 win over Martin Schindler in round two. Humphries will face Krcmar in the round of 16, and his hope is clearly to come out looking rather more like the player who built a 5-2 lead than the one who nearly let it go. Whether the train stays on the rails this time remains to be seen.