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MUMBAI:
Ten Sports, the most watched sports channel of the sub-continent,
will once again showcase the wide variety of its coverage when it
follows the fortunes of India’s five-time National Darts champion
Ashfaque Sayed at the World Darts Championship.
Ten
Sports had earlier planned live coverage of the championship, which
offers a whopping 100,000 pounds to the winner, during the semi-finals
and finals, but will now start the coverage from the preliminary
stage to catch Ashfaque’s match with China’s Shi Yongsheng.
Live
coverage of the preliminary round starts Thursday, December 20,
at 6:00 pm IST. The semi-finals and the finals are scheduled on
December 31 and January 1.
Ashfaque
Sayed is the best-known darts player from India. The Pune-based
Ashfaque took up darts for the first time in 2003 and has dominated
the national scene since then, winning five national singles and
six men’s doubles titles.
But
all eyes during the championship, to be held at Alexandra Palace
in North London, will be on 13-time world champion, Phil ‘The
Power’ Taylor.
Taylor
had a difficult start to 2007 after losing last year's final to
Dutchman Raymond van Barneveld, but has returned to form in recent
events, and he warned his rivals of his determination to begin 2008
as the World Darts champion once again.
Taylor,
who has embarked on a new fitness regime and experimented with new
darts in a bid to fine-tune his game, said: “I’ve got
the fight back in me. I wasn’t concentrating on what I should
have, but now I’m back dedicated again and that’s what
it’s about.
“When
I do something, I try to do it the best I can, so when I started
the diet and the training I went mad at it.”
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