Bahrain Masters: Luke Little and Luke Humphries win first-round matches but Rob Cross crashes out

Newly crowned world champion Luke Littler began the defense of his Bahrain Masters title with a 6-3 victory against Lawrence Ilagan in Sakhir.

Littler, who won his first PDC senior trophy at the tournament 12 months ago, was 4-1 up when Filipino Ilagan won back-to-back legs to put little pressure on the 17-year-old.

However, a 142 checkout in the eighth leg brought Littler back in control and he eventually cruised to victory with an average of 94.36.

There was a shock in the opening match when world number three Rob Cross was defeated 6-3 by Paolo Nebrida, ranked 91 places lower.

The 30-year-old Nebrida won with a double top and became the first Filipino player to win a match in the World Series.

World number one Luke Humphries averaged 103.66 and hit six doubles out of six to beat home player Abdullah Saeed 6-0.

Thursday’s first round will pit eight players from the PDC Circuit against eight players from Asia in first-to-six stage matches.

The quarter-finals, semi-finals and final are all scheduled to take place on Friday.

Welshman Gerwyn Price booked his place in the last eight with a 6-3 win over 23-year-old Lok Yin Lee of Hong Kong.

Debutants Stephen Bunting and Chris Dobey are also on the move after defeating number one Nitin Kumar of India (6-2) and Bassem Mahmood of Bahrain (6-0) respectively.

Scotland’s Peter Wright beat Filipino Alexis Toilo 6-3, while Englishman Nathan Aspinall won 6-2 against China’s Xiaochen Zong.