Sky Sports pundit Glen Durrant reveal Dimitri Van den Bergh text him almost apologising for the way he crashed out of the World Darts Championship yesterday. The 31-year-old was beaten 0-3 by Darren Beveridge in yesterday’s evening session at Ally Pally.

It’s been a tough year for the Belgian player, who took an indefinite break from darts in April earlier this year. He withdrew from a Players Championship event just minutes before he was due to play Jose de Sousa, before returning to the oche for the World Cup of Darts for Belgium in June.

He wanted to focus on his family life and ruled out a return to the sport on a full-time basis. Van den Bergh was once World Matchplay Champion but he couldn’t lay a finger on debutant Beveridge and was dumped out of the competition in the first round.

Speaking to Sky Sports, Durrant said: “Listen, I sit here as a pundit these days and I’ve got to not show bias but Dimitri is someone I’m very, very close to and I’m saddened. I’m saddened to see him like that because I know how meticulous he is in his preparation and I know how much it means to him to be at the very top of the game.

“And now he’s experienced the other side of the game, he’s literally just messaged me there a couple of minutes ago almost saying sorry because I have been chatting with him and it just didn’t happen for him for one thing or another and winning only one leg as well.

“I know I’ve been there so I can appreciate his emotions right now. It’s difficult, you’re scratching your head thinking how can you make the game look so easy at one point and then all of sudden everything is becoming difficult.

“But I’m a big believer in character building, this is testing him and he’s got a huge 2026 coming up now. It’s up to him to find the solutions. Beveridge was excellent by the way but Dimitri needs to find solutions if he’s going to kick on from here.”

After the match, Beveridge told Sky Sports: “You’ve no idea, this is absolutely fantastic! I dreamed of this when I was 13 years old, I’m 33 now so 19 years later and I’m managing to win games on this stage, it’s absolutely amazing.

“He’s [Van Den Bergh] not been playing for a few months so it’s hard to know what to expect from him. But everybody knows Van Den Bergh, he’s a previous major winner, I knew what he was capable of, so I just had to come up here and, as long as I played my game I knew I had a chance. This is one of the greatest days of my life and I can’t believe it, honestly.”