• Would Murray be more popular if he didn’t possess a wonderful killer instinct?
• Would Murray be more popular if he was from England, preferably southern England?

If you answer ‘yes’ to either of those (and I can’t see how anyone could answer anything but ‘yes’) then David has a point.

Though I hear Murray criticised constantly by the Barley-water-sipping classes, I never cease to be shocked at how middle England allows its prejudices to cloud its judgement of a sporting great.

Perhaps it will take that inevitable Grand Slam win before all of Britain recognises Murray’s exceptional talent for what it is.

That said, it will take a lot more blogging from David before I recognise darts players as the sporting greats he seems to think they are…but perhaps I am revealing my own prejudices…

1 – I’m not implying that Bates and Henman weren’t that committed to winning. What I am saying is that they didn’t have the mental strength and discipline to close games out (see Henman’s folding to Ivanesivic in the Wimbledon semi finals as a good example). Henman and Bates choked too many times at the business end of matches to think that they possessed the real killer instinct of champions. Phil Taylor talks about his success in darts being down to the fact that his resolute commitment to winning and mental strength being considerably greater than other players. It is this mental attitude that differentiates the great players and the champions from the good players.

2 – As far as the World Cup is concerned, people who pick on Murray’s comments a few years ago are largely people who don’t really understand football and don’t understand the friendly footballing rivalry between England and Scotland (or between the likes of Sunderland and Newcastle for that matter). To dislike a proven winner based on his comments when he was 19 seems pretty harsh to me.

I haven’t reduced anything to class but there is a separate argument to be made about why tennis hasn’t reached out more to the inner cities and beyond the leafy suburbs. Pat Cash seems to think so and the LTA’s attempts to reach out to inner cities in the past few years seems to suggest that they accept there is an issue.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-sport/article-23770580-pat-cash-lets-face-it-the-lta-are-still-a-total-joke-to-tennis.do

Very good point about Murray’s innate talent (and without a doubt one of the UK’s best tennis players in generations), right up until you said:

‘Clearly, people would prefer their tennis players to be fresh faced, “well-spoken” embodiments of middle England than sportsmen with a relentless focus on winning. There is a reason why he has already achieved so much more than people like Jeremy Bates or Tim Henman.’

Here you’re both ignoring two important issues:

1. You imply Bates and Henman really werent that bothered about winning – i think that’s actually a bit of an insult to their lifetime’s commitment to sport

2. Andy Murray wore a Paraguay shirt when they played England at the World Cup.

Strangely enough people from my home town cite this latter issue as a reason they’re not great Murray supporters – but you suggest it’s one about class. I think it’s called: ‘Scottish-English tension’. See- simple analysis, without having to make any reference to the ‘c-word’.