Peter Crouch has banned teenage darts sensation Luke Littler from his podcast so he can concentrate on his career. Littler has been the focus of heavy media attention ever since his fairytale run at the World Darts Championship.
The 17-year-old is now the poster boy for darts and among Britain’s most recognisable sportsmen. However, many have bashed the major news outlets for placing too much pressure on Littler.
Darts icon Gary Anderson insisted that the media will be at fault if it goes “t*** up” for Littler while the man himself admitted he’s not a fan of being in the limelight. During the most recent episode of Crouch’s podcast he discussed Luke the Nuke’s swift rise to fame with co-host and former Chelsea star Steve Sidwell and Capital FM DJ Chris Stark.
Crouch said: “I’d love Luke Littler on, I’d like to speak to him. You have people who burst on the scene at 16. I was watching the darts, they had a list of people who have won things at 16. Obviously, it was before he lost [the final]. Martina Hingis, Wayne Rooney, they’ve all gone on to massive things. It would be interesting to see where his head’s at, at this age.”
But Stark believes Littler should be shielded from the media. He said: “Do you think that’s part of the problem that he’s had this massive success at 16. He’s managed to get this far on his own without all the attention.
“A lot of the criticism is that suddenly he’s out doing all interviews. Maybe the best thing we could do as a podcast is almost run a campaign to say, we are not going to get you on the podcast.
“We are going to be the only media outlet to say we don’t want Luke on because we want him to concentrate on his darts. This amount of weird attention that appears you must have seen it galvanise some players and people but it does have a negative effect as well.
“Maybe that’s we do with Luke. We give him a couple more years, win the Worlds at some point, then invite him on the podcast after that. Until then we operate a policy of everyone should leave Luke Littler alone.”
Agreeing with Stark’s sentiment, Crouch added: “I wouldn’t like it personally. At 16 I was miles off it. But we are making a stand, we do not want Luke Littler on the podcast!”
