World number one Luke Littler took time out of his busy schedule to make a young fan's dream come true, surprising 12-year-old cancer survivor Evan in a special meetup arranged by SPORTbible. The poignant encounter came after Evan, a Scot, sent a heartfelt video message to the two-time world champion.
In the video, Evan said: "Hi Luke, it's Evan. You help me through cancer and you inspired me to play darts. I'm your biggest fan and hopefully we get a chance to play with each other once. Bye." Littler watched the message and then arranged to surprise Evan, who was throwing arrows at the board when the world number one walked into the room. Evan narrowly missed the bullseye before turning around to see 'The Nuke' standing there waiting to greet him.
Stunned, Evan shook hands with Littler and said: "My favourite darts player." The pair then locked horns on the oche before Littler graciously signed a shirt for him as well as a pack of darts in a day the young man will never forget.
Evan was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in April 2020, following initial suspicions he was suffering with Covid. While receiving treatment in hospital, he watched on as Littler made his immense impact on the PDC Tour and has since been a huge fan. His mum, Kelly, explained how his desire to fight and win helped him overcome cancer. "He said that obviously Luke's dream is to win. I said, 'he never gives up and you shouldn't give up on your fight either, to battle cancer, because that kind of got him through that'," she said. "He had a lot of side effects. He couldn't really walk at all through treatment. He was in a wheelchair so he's only just really managing to walk without pain now."
That was not all: Evan will soon realise his dream of seeing Littler play live in the Premier League Darts in Aberdeen next year. Littler, the reigning champion, will look to put on a show. "He was always on about like this, like that, I want to go and see Luke, I want to do this. A lot of the time we spent in hospital and that's how he got into darts because we watched a lot of darts," Kelly added.
Littler, who is set to compete against 20 non-Tour Card holders in Beat Luke Littler, took time out of his busy schedule to make Evan's dream come true.
