Scott Wilson Column: Why MVG is at the top of the Christmas sporting tree

Given there’s a host of football to be played, perhaps you’d go for Sergio Aguero or Mezut Ozil, two of the brightest lights in the Premier League. England’s Test tour of South Africa starts on Boxing Day, so Alastair Cook and Joe Root will have their supporters.

I’m going to go for someone who probably didn’t even cross your mind though. Michael van Gerwen. LVG might be having his problems at Old Trafford, but in terms of being at the very top of his sporting tree, MVG currently takes some beating.

Straight away, I know some of you will have stopped reading. ‘Darts isn’t a sport – it’s just two fat blokes flinging something at a board’. Fine. If that’s your mindset, it’s not really worth us going any further.

I also accept that I’m biased. My love of darts began in the late 1980s when Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a night sat round the fire, licking the middle out of a Walnut Whip, and watching Eric Bristow and John Lowe peer through the fog of cigarette smoke in the final of the Embassy. Happy days indeed.

Darts is still an integral part of my Christmas routine. Next week, I’ll be making my annual pilgrimage to Ally Pally with my brother for a day at the arrows.

I’m fortunate enough to watch a lot of sport in this job, and people often ask me what my favourite event of the year is. Number one is easy. Cheltenham. When it comes to a mixture of remarkable sporting theatre and a bloody good day out, you can’t beat that moment when you’re draining off the dregs of a pint of Guinness as the horses leave the paddock ahead of the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. Heaven.

But the darts is a close second, and I’ll be there next Friday, ploughing through two-pint pots of lager and shouting myself hoarse sat next to a group of blokes dressed as Power Rangers. Look out for me on the telly – I’ll be a Tellytubby.

The revival of darts has been one of the most remarkable sporting stories of the last decade or so. Widely assumed to be an anachronism after the end of its 80s heyday, the sport has been reborn largely on the back of some astute marketing by one of its governing bodies, the PDC, and Sky Sports.

Every major tournament is an event now, part sporting glitz and glamour and part stag-do weekend in Benidorm. It works because it’s an antidote to the increasingly anodyne and corporate nature of so many other big sporting events, particularly football in the Premier League. A day out at the darts is fun, rather than something you do out of duty or because it’s a good chance to do a bit of networking with some business contacts.

It’s also relatively inexpensive and, for all that it’s raucous and fuelled by alcohol, welcoming to all sexes and ages. In all the years I’ve been going, I’ve never seen any trouble yet. Unless you count blokes who are a bit worse for wear struggling to unzip a Morph suit in order to go to the toilet.

The staging of the World Championships around Christmas is perfect as it lends itself to a blow out and enables darts to fill a gaping hole in the television schedules. That has undoubtedly has helped in terms of raising the sport’s profile.

All of that would count for little, however, if the standard of the action was poor. Ultimately, no matter what gimmicks it attaches itself to, a sport has to stand or fall by the quality of its participants.

And that, more than anything, is why darts has been reborn. Fans of a certain vintage will hark back to the ‘golden’ days of Bristow, Jocky Wilson and Keith Deller, but none of the 1980s stars would be able to hold a candle to the players at the top of today’s game.

If you don’t believe me, check the averages. Bristow’s best-ever average in a world final was 97.50 – today, that might not even get him past the first round at the Worlds.

You can quibble about the thickness of the wire on today’s boards, and the improvements in flights and stems, but the fact remains that the sport has moved on and today’s players are performing at a level that would have been unimaginable even a decade ago.

They’re better than they’ve ever been, which makes van Gerwen’s dominance over the last 12 months all the more remarkable.

In the last 12 months, the Dutchman has won 18 tournaments, 172 matches and earned prize money worth more than £900,000. After suffering a surprise defeat in last year’s World semi-final, he won 42 of his next 43 games. Having won this month’s World Series final against Peter Wright, he will go into the Worlds on a run of 21 straight wins.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this when Phil Taylor went into decline. Taylor, the greatest darts player of all time, was meant to leave an unfillable hole when his standards began to dip, but just as Novak Djokovic has emerged as a worthy successor to Roger Federer, so van Gerwen has seamlessly stepped into Taylor’s shoes.

‘The king is not quite as formidable as he once was, long live the new king’. Van Gerwen is that new king, and while he will have to see off some stiff opposition to claim his second world title, most notably from reigning champion Gary Anderson, the experienced Adrian Lewis and the evergreen Taylor, who can never be written off, the fact he starts next Friday as an evens money favourite for the tournament underlines the extent of his dominance.

As ever at this time of year, the staging of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award lends itself to a debate about how certain sportsmen and women are perceived.

In my opinion, van Gerwen and the world of darts in general doesn’t get anything like the praise or credit it deserves. And if you don’t believe me, there’s a two-pint pot of beer on the bar for you next Friday so you can find out….