If you walked up to the top 10 players in the world and asked them what they think about averages, they would give you the same answer.
They don’t care. There’s no bonus or incentive for registering a big average. All they care about is winning.
We talk about averages in the same way we’d talk about different key statistics in any other sport, and that will never change.
They are a brilliant guide for us to discuss and analyse how well someone is playing but as far as improving your own game is concerned, you shouldn’t focus on them.
The BDO way of measuring averages was for one dart. The PDC brought in the three-dart average because they wanted to give fans something fresh to reflect on.
Now that has become the norm but if you speak to anyone in my generation, the golden goose used to be the 30 average. Now it’s 90-100 for the three-dart average.
Back in the old days, the BDO system had one-dart averages for everyone who played county darts.
But there was also a ‘dynamic average’, which was your one-dart average added to how many games you’d won. So if you’d won nine games that season, your dynamic average would be your one-dart average plus nine points.
Collectively this would create a league table that helped them establish who they thought was the best county player in a season. So it was effectively average-led rather than results-led – and this table selected the national teams!
During the recent World Seniors Championship, viewers will probably have noticed that the scoreline graphic on the screen also included both players’ live in-running average throughout the entire match.
This stat only appears sporadically during PDC tournaments on Sky Sports and ITV but is referenced more regularly by the commentators to give viewers a statistical guide of how well the players are performing.
However, if the TV networks include averages constantly on their graphics then the players will notice them via the monitors on the stage which help them keep track of the scores. The last thing they’d want to know is their average.
It’s a widely held belief that players who put in their best statistical performances will have no clue what their average is during the match. They get themselves in this incredible zone where they focus on taking each leg at a time. That’s all that matters.
When Peter Wright broke the world average record for a broadcast match of 123.5 back in 2019, he had no clue until Krzysztof Ratajski pointed it out to him after the stat flashed up on the screen following the match.