Hankey Beats Waites

A remarkable night of darts at the Lakeside saw two of the top three seeds beaten in the second round with both Scott Waites and Dean Winstanley sent packing by Ted Hankey and Alan Norris.

Two-time winner Hankey is a big name in the BDO World Championship, but he was only seeded down at 15 and 2011 World Masters champion Waites was expected to be too hot for him to handle.

Waites was also a winner of the Grand Slam of Darts when beating the PDC players and was a big favourite to claim a first Lakeside world title.

However, 'The Count' hung in there as second seed Waites dominated scoring but could not nail his doubles and time and again Hankey was able to step in and save himself.

Hankey twice fought back from a set down to force a decider, but the nerves still showed as he missed his first five match-winning doubles.

Eventually, Stoke thrower Hankey held his nerve though as he finally checked out on 144 to claim a thrilling 4-3 victory and book his place in the quarter-finals once again.

An even bigger shock came later on, but it never seemed to be on as last year's runner-up Winstanley cruised into a 3-1 lead over Scotsman Norris to have one foot in the last eight.

'Chuck' Norris showed all of his fighting spirit to battle back though, even if he had been up since 7.30am nervously practising for his match that did not begin until just after 9.30pm.

Norris hit back to level it up at 3-3 and then it was he, rather than his more experience opponent, who managed to produce the better darts to go through after another 4-3 epic.

Hankey will now play fellow Englishman Martin Atkins in the quarter-finals after he defeated Dutch 10th seed Willy van de Wiel 4-2 in their second round match.

With the bottom half of the draw blown wide open after Wednesday results, Norris now plays young Christian Kist after his impressive victory over Geert De Vos.