NOT since Sir Don Bradman was dismissed for a duck in his final Test innings has a relentless sporting great bade such an underwhelming farewell.
Phil Taylor, the 16-time champion of the world, was annihilated by a rookie in his last competitive match in the PDC final at Ally Pally.
And that is the beauty of sport, it so rarely provides us with a neat ‘happily ever after’ finale.
Bradman failing to score the four runs he needed for a career average of 100; Zinedine Zidane red-carded in disgrace for a head-butt in the World Cup final, Usain Bolt pulling up with a hammy twang going for his final gold.
And now Taylor dismembered 7-2 by Rob Cross — a former electrician from Hastings — where accurate arrow-work has been dethroning kings since 1066.
Taylor, at 57 and with five years having elapsed since he last ruled at Alexandra Palace, was never supposed to have reached this final.
But once he was faced with Cross, who only gave up his job as a sparky 16 months ago, Taylor was a strong favourite to head out on a high. Yet the 27-year-old was responsible for the ultimate Power cut with a nerveless performance.
Cross had won an epic semi-final against reigning champion Michael van Gerwen on Saturday night.
POWER OUTAGE Rob Cross wins World Darts Championship final after stunning Phil Taylor 7-2
But this was meant to be different. The unique pressure of a world final should have reduced Cross to a trembling wreck.
Yet remarkably it was Taylor who seemed shaken by the occasion.
It is 28 years since a slimmer, mustachioed, unknown Taylor destroyed his mentor Eric Bristow in his first world final in 1990 — eight months before Cross was born.
Back then, Taylor was not long out of a ceramics factory where he used to manufacture toilet handles for £52 per week.
Since then he has flushed countless rivals round the U-bend on his way to career earnings of £8million and more than 100 titles.
He insists his retirement is not a Frank Sinatra or George Foreman job but a genuine authentic end to his competitive career. But it has been fuelled by a sense that he is undervalued by the PDC, who have been embarrassed by the way he had breezed into the final.
Had he simply wanted to reach for the pipe and slippers, Taylor would not be embarking on a gruelling worldwide exhibition tour throughout this year.
Taylor might be motivated by money and by ego but then few dominant sportsmen have been driven on by apple trees, honey bees and snow white turtle doves.
His relentless drive for success has been phenomenal and his celebrity has been the foundation for the vast beer-guzzling and fancy dress convention which has come to define the British sporting Christmas as surely as football managers moaning about fixture congestion.
Taylor’s walk-on routine, with its lightning bolts, its Amazonian escorts and the thumping beat of ‘The Power’ by Snap always seems slightly overblown given it simply signals a tubby grandfather from Stoke shuffling on to a stage.
But if you were Cross last night, on his first ever meeting with his idol, you could be forgiven for being intimidated by it.
Not a bit of it, though. Cross seized on a Taylor error to win the deciding leg of the first set, then took out 167 to clinch the second and 153 to take the third. For the first time in this tournament, a befuddled Taylor looked his age.
Taylor did get on the board in the fourth set and at the start of the fifth he was millimetres away from a nine-dart checkout, only for Cross to snatch the leg.
Missing that double 12 for what would have been his first nine-darter at a World Championship was the moment when all hoped seemed to slip from the big man.
Cross finished with a mercilessness that made Carlos the Jackal look like Elmer Fudd.
He played with a breeziness which suggested he was playing in a local pub match with his mates — and won the title with a 140 checkout.
Unlike Bradman, Taylor averaged over 100 in this final, and yet he was not even close.
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