The world number four is still mourning the loss of his grandfather Colin Miles to Covid-19 in April and attended the funeral in a small family gathering as recently as Monday.

It was therefore to be expected that an under practiced Cross would be well below his usual standards and although he averaged less than 85 in all three matches, he still managed to win them all.

After easing past William Borland 5-3 in his opening match, the 29-year-old from Hastings then survived a final-leg decider against the talented Dimitri van den Bergh to seize control of the group.

Bizarrely, van den Bergh was playing in Peter Wright house, where he's been staying since the start of lockdown, and having thrashed Karel Sedlacek 5-1 in his opening game, it looked as though weeks of practicing with the world champion would pay off.

The Belgian averaged 10 points more than the 2018 world champion in their encounter with an impressive 91 but the result seemingly knocked the stuffing out of him and he then succumbed to a surprise 5-3 defeat to Borland, who had just been thrashed 5-0 by Sedlacek.

So it all came down to the final match of the night, with Cross needing four legs to guarantee top spot and Sedlacek needing to triumph 5-3 or better to progress to the next round.

The PDC's only tour card holder from the Czech Republic, who was an 8/1 chance to prevail at the start of the night, flew out of the blocks by winning the opening four legs, but he ran out of steam as Voltage staged a stunning comeback from his newly-built 'darts out-house' in his garden.

After becoming the first player in the PDC Home Tour to win a match from 4-0 down, Cross was still only thinking of one man.

The 2019 World Matchplay champion said: "I still miss the old boy so much but he would have wanted me to compete tonight. Hopefully next time I can play much better."