John Henderson stunned the world No4, Daryl Gurney, by knocking him out of the William Hill PDC World Championship with a 4-2 victory at Alexandra Palace. The Scotsman Henderson took the first set after a closely matched opening and sealed a 121 checkout on the bullseye to level at 2-2 in the second, before a 100 checkout gave him a 2-0 lead.

“Superchin” Gurney hit back by claiming the next two sets with the pair trading blows before Henderson took the fifth to edge back in front. He then broke Gurney with a 24 checkout to throw for the match, taking out 52 to line up a meeting with Rob Cross, who scored a high-quality 4-3 win over the 13th seed Michael Smith in the afternoon session.

Cross and Smith combined for 29 maximums during the match as both men averaged over 100, while Smith was left to rue missing two match-winning darts in the sixth set.

Phil Taylor whitewashed Justin Pipe 4-0 to sweep into the last 16, where he will take on Keegan Brown.

Taylor, playing in his last World Championship, took the first set before backing up a 165 setup shot with double 16 to move into a 2-0 lead. The Stoke thrower claimed a 119 checkout to seal the third set before making sure of a post-Christmas return by not giving a set to Pipe, who denied trying to put off Bernie Smith by coughing on stage during their first-round clash.

“It was very difficult to concentrate. It was one of the hardest matches,” Taylor, the 16-times former world champion, said in an interview on PDC Darts’ official Twitter feed. “That was on par with Eric Bristow at the Circus Tavern, semi-finals in 1997 I think. It was hard, almost double vision. You couldn’t keep the crowd out. They were just booing him [Pipe] and jeering him and calling him all the names under the sun.”

Raymond van Barneveld saw off Kevin Anderson 4-1 in Saturday’s final match to line up a third-round clash with his fellow Dutchman Vincent van der Voort.

Steve West will take on 2017 finalist and two-times winner Gary Anderson in the third round after winning 4-1 against Holland’s Jermaine Wattimena, while Brown saw off Zoran Lerchbacher with a 4-2 success earlier in the day to progress to the meeting with Taylor.