Littler suffers shock World Masters exit

Luke Littler suffered a shock 4-2 defeat in the quarter-finals of the World Masters as he was knocked out by Jonny Clayton in Milton Keynes.

New world champion Littler had lost just one leg in his two previous matches in the tournament, but had no answer to a consistently brilliant display from Clayton.

The Wales number one - the World Masters champion in 2021 - went into his tie against Littler as a big underdog, but a combination of heavy scoring and high-quality finishing saw him run out a worthy winner.

Defending champion Stephen Bunting was also a casualty in Sunday's quarter-finals as he was knocked out by Danny Noppert in a 4-3 thriller that went right down to the final leg.

But world number one Luke Humphries made no mistake in making the semi-finals and he will face Noppert after a comfortable 4-1 victory over Australian Damon Heta.

Bunting won opening set against Dutchman Noppert but then had a catalogue of missed doubles to blame as he quickly fell 3-1 behind in sets.

The Liverpublian missed 11 attempts at double in a row as Noppert hoovered up six consecutive legs to move to the brink over victory.

Bunting is a fighter though, and his response was impressive as he won four of the next five legs to fore a decider - which quickly went to the very last leg.

Noppert missed the first match dart, but Bunting's double troubles struck again as he missed three darts for the match to allow his opponent to nail double eight and clinch victory.

"He had me under pressure from the off," Bunting told ITV4 after the match. "Whether I'm ahead or 10 nil down I always believe I've got the game to win, but Danny was unbelievable there and kept his head at the end."

Humphries had few problems with Heta as he averaged just over 104 and hit six 180s to power into the last four - and said he would be heading back to bed before the evening semis.

"I slowed down my throw just a little tiny bit and that seemed to work for me, so tonight when I come back I'm going to keep it there," said Humphries.

"Now I can go back for a nice sleep, come back tonight and hopefully I can perform at those levels again and if I do then it's going to take a good performance to beat me."

Quarter-final results

Luke Humphries 4-1 Damon Heta

Danny Noppert 4-3 Stephen Bunting

Luke Littler 2-4 Jonny Clayton

Dimitri van den Bergh v Nathan Aspinall

Semi-finals

Luke Humphries v Danny Noppert

Jonny Clayton v Dimitri van den Bergh or Nathan Aspinall

There will be live text commentary on the semi-finals and final from 19:00 GMT on the BBC Sport website and app.