Luke Littler has admitted he lost his head after being booed by the Alexandra Palace crowd and vowed to react differently in the future. The Nuke reached the quarter-finals of the World Darts Championship with a 4-2 win over Rob Cross on Monday night before making headlines with his response to the crowd.
The 18-year-old has previously been a major fan-favourite in north London, but his assent to become the dominant world No.1 and defending champion has turned the tables. He was booed by sections of the crowd on Monday, with Cross gaining support as the underdog.
Littler played into the atmosphere by shouting "now what?" after throwing crucial darts. And his response in his post-match interview with Sky Sports on stage didn't help matters.
"I'm not bothered, I'm not bothered, really I'm not bothered," he said. "Can I just say one thing. You guys pay for tickets and you pay for my prize money so thank you for my money, thank you for booing me!"
By the time he had reached the post-match press conference, he'd had a chance to cool down and Littler admitted it didn't feel like he had averaged 106.5 because he had so much "adrenaline, emotion and anger" going through him.
"I think I lost it, I think it's still on there!" he joked when asked what it would take for him to fully lose his head on stage.
"The fans have done what they done and I've reacted as any other player would really," he explained. "Think I might have reacted a bit early on after that first set and when I came on for the second set and they were still at it I said to myself, 'you've done it a bit too early here'.
"But I just had to get on with the job and when I went 3-1 up I felt like I was really in it. Rob found his feet but I just had to get rid of him."
Asked if he was using the energy from the crowd, Littler replied: "Obviously it wasn't really at the front of my mind, but they want the underdog to win, or for the game to go on even longer than it should do. But it definitely fuelled me up and I definitely played better, so we'll just have to see what happened on New Year's Day."
Asked what made him lose his temper, he added: "The fans. Obviously I gave it a little bit with a few check-outs throughout the game. But I kept telling myself to leave everything until that last dart goes in."
Littler will play Luke Woodhouse or Krzysztof Ratajski in the next round on New Year's Day and could face Ryan Searle or Jonny Clayton in the semi-finals before a possible final against long-term rival Luke Humphries.