Luke Humphries won't like Dimitri van den Bergh's six-word claim about Luke Littler

Dimitri van den Bergh has claimed that Luke Humphries is "living in Luke Littler's shadow" – despite beating him in the World Championship final. Van den Bergh has spoken out ahead of his World Matchplay quarter-final match against Humphries and thrown some fighting talk his way.

In his post-match press conference after beating Jonny Clayton, Van den Bergh was clearly fired up to face Humphries, and delivered a pretty hard-hitting dig to the world No.1. Van den Bergh said: "I have to believe that I can do it again (beat Humphries). If I can go into a preparation where I say; 'I can give him a game', that's a big positive.

"Unfortunately for Luke Humphries, I'm just going to point this out now, he is the world champion and he's living in Luke Littler's shadow. That's something that has never happened before in the the past."

Littler has been a popular face in darts over the last several months due to his talented prowess in the sport despite his young age. The 17-year-old has faced Humphries nine times and has beaten him on seven of those ocassions – with Humphries having defeated Littler 7-4 in the World Championship final.

Despite the monumental win for 'Cool Hand Luke', Van den Bergh is adamant that Humphries has to deal with Littler – who won the Premier League on debut – being a more popular face in the sport. Littler was dumped out in the first round of the World Matchplay against Michael van Gerwen, but his name is still popping up in press conferences to 'haunt' Humphries.

Humphries has hit out at Van den Bergh previously after losing the UK Open final to the Belgian in March. Speaking after the match, Humphries said: "No, I wasn’t angry with him but I’m used to Dimitri being quite a flowy player and he’s quite a good pace to play against. Whereas, he’s completely different now, he’s probably one of the toughest players to play with because he’s incredibly slow.

"He takes a long, long time to take his darts out. That’s not what I’m used to with him. Obviously this is a new adaption for his game and is going to take a lot of getting used to for players."

Humphries added: "When someone changes their whole style, you’re used to one game from them and then it’s completely different. Yeah, it was quite tough to follow the rhythm but that wasn’t the reason I didn’t play so good. You’ve got to give him credit, the crowd were on his back. I tried to stop them from booing and whistling because obviously no one likes it. But the crowd made their minds up.

"I thought when he slowed everything down at 10-8 up it wasn’t a good thing to do because the crowd get on your back there."

It's shaping up to be a fiery match-up between Humphries and Van den Bergh in the World Matchplay quarter-finals, which will get underway at 8pm on Thursday, July 18.