I f Gordon Brown really wants to make people start liking
him, he could do a lot worse than turn to whoever’s giving mighty Andy Murray some advice these days. For what was obvious in that stunning, thrilling, epic, heart-pumping comeback to beat France’s Richard Gasquet in what was basically a night match on the Centre Court is that the great Scot has turned himself into a thorough crowdpleaser. Later, munching sushi and taking a call from Tim Henman while talking engagingly about the match in a live radio interview, he must have won over millions more.
Which brings me to the real Wimbledon highlight, possibly a sporting moment of the year, when the feisty if unpronounceable Russian, Ally Kudryavtseva, revealed that the reason she beat the terminally annoying Maria Sharapova was because she didn’t like her clothes. Fair enough; who does? And it’s good to see that one of the most noble of all instincts in school sport — to put one over the bastard with the better kit — survives well into adulthood.
Though quite what this new dimension to elite sporting competition means for Roger Federer’s appalling cardigan is anybody’s guess. Let’s hope it’s not the death of him. But what might happen if he loses, unthinkably perhaps but not inconceivably, in the final, could be very interesting. Will he make as rapid an exit as Bjorn Borg in 1981 when he lost to John McEnroe at Wimbledon and the US Open and immediately disappeared into a rather dark world of dodgy business ventures, girls and heaven knows what? And McEnroe himself has said that once Borg quit, a lot of the point had gone and he left top-level tennis soon after.
Will the same happen to Federer, who heroworshipped Borg, if he loses to Nadal? You can’t see the dark side having much appeal, but maybe the marble halls of his Dubai home, and the squillion-pound cheques from advertising promotions will be too strong a pull?
Let’s hope not, but in the delightful Nadal, tennis has a real candidate for beefcake beatification. Recently, on the night he won the Monte Carlo tournament, beating Federer in a thriller, he flew to Barcelona. Not on a private jet but on the Catalan Easyjet, Vueling. He flew economy, as that is all there is; he waited and had a drink at the same little airport bar as everyone else; he chatted shyly with one or two fellow passengers and then struggled like hell to get his giant cup into the hand-luggage compartment inside the plane, to everyone’s amusement. What a guy!
Elsewhere there’s relief all round for sports lovers that England aren’t playing cricket against New Zealand any more. We seem to have been at it since the beginning of the year, and it’s felt like being on a permanent diet of low-calorie ready meals. Perhaps that was why England behaved so shockingly over the runout farrago at the Oval. The two sides had been together so long that England’s captain Paul Collingwood, not to mention Ian Bell who did the fielding and Kevin Pietersen who took off the bails, had forgotten what really matters — sportsmanship, honour and a sense of proportion.
So thank heaven for some real opposition at last. The first Test against South Africa at Lord’s starts in a week’s time. This should be a thrilling series, though why it’s only four Tests not five is unfathomable. In Steyn, Ntini and Morkel South Africa have probably the best fast-bowling attack in the world, and we should now, at last, get a chance to see how good England are, and get the measure of their prospects for the next Ashes series. Don’t hold your breath.
Previous page
