OLIVER HOLT: Andy Murray is the kind of player you’re happy to have as a hero… I don’t want to let him go

Maybe you don’t remember it, the way it was before. Maybe you don’t remember how the highlight for British men’s tennis in the 1970s was when Roger Taylor offered to replay a point against a 17-year-old Bjorn Borg in a Wimbledon quarter-final and became a byword for wonderful sportsmanship.

Maybe you don’t remember when Buster Mottram was the British No1 and was more famous for being a National Front sympathiser than anything to do with his tennis. Maybe you don’t remember when Jeremy Bates was our leading light and it was a triumph if he made it to the second week of Wimbledon.

I recall reading in the 90s that Bates drove a Porsche and wondering how it could be that such a lowly player could be so handsomely rewarded. I might not have appreciated then that to become the world No 54, Bates’ highest ranking, put you in pretty rare company.

British men had their moments. John Lloyd married Chris Evert. He also got to the final of the Australian Open in 1977 and won the Wimbledon mixed doubles with Wendy Turnbull. But these were anomalies. Virginia Wade and Sue Barker were superstars of the women’s game but male British players were a byword for under-achievement.

That changed with Tim Henman. Henman did not get credit for that because he could never quite find a way past the grass court genius that was Pete Sampras and so even though he was a pathfinder, for those who only watched tennis once a year, when it took place at the All England Club, he became a symbol of dashed hopes.

So that was the way it was before. That was the way it was before Andy Murray. That was the way it was before Murray, an outsider whose brother, Jamie, had been betrayed by the establishment, changed everything and made us proud of British men’s tennis for the first time since the 1930s.

And that is why, when Murray suffered a crushing straight sets defeat to 30th seed Tomás Martín Etcheverry in the first round of the Australian Open yesterday and the prospect of his retirement from the game he has graced for nearly 20 years suddenly began to seem very real, the emotion that gripped many of us was fear.

Fear, I suppose, of what the landscape will look like without him. Because for nearly two decades, he has been a joy to watch. To be a British sports fan in the age of Andy Murray has been a treat never to be taken for granted. To be a sports reporter in the age of Andy Murray has been one of the great privileges of the job.

I grew up across the road from my local tennis club in south Manchester. I spent every day of summer there. I never thought I’d see a British man win Wimbledon. When Murray did it by beating Novak Djokovic in the 2013 final, it was best thing I could imagine in British sport, save, perhaps, an England football team winning the World Cup.

Murray has always represented so much that is good about sport, too. He has represented indefatigability, an absolute refusal to give in, ever, a dogged determination to get to the top, even if it meant doing it in the era of Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, an obsession with excellence and dedication.

He is the kind of player you’re happy to have as a hero. A man who never puts appearance above reality, a man who was never about the show but was always about the game, a man of principle, a man who loves the sport so much that he has fought and fought and fought to remain in it when others would have bowed to injury long ago.

The truth is, I don’t want to let him go. I don’t think anyone who loves sport wants to let him go. There are many tennis players who enjoyed an autumn to their careers that helped define them. Jimmy Connors was one whose defiance burned brightly right until the end.

And Murray has been similar. Even after his hip surgery, even when it seemed he was having trouble playing without a limp, he has conjured some magnificent victories against younger, top-ranked players. His competitive spirit has continued to be an inspiration and more than enough reason to play on.

The defeat to Etcheverry in Melbourne – and the manner of that defeat – suggests those reasons are beginning to dim and that the satisfaction that he has left in his career is beginning to wane.

And the reality is that when he is gone, we will be back to the way we were before. We will be thankful when a British men’s tennis player reaches the second week of a Grand Slam. We will be shouting for the underdogs and the wild cards at Wimbledon again.

I am not normally someone in favour of sportsmen having farewell tours. I prefer the Michael Atherton method of announcing your retirement when you have already played your last Test match.

In Murray’s case, I’d be happy to make an exception. I hope he plays Wimbledon again this season. He deserves it and the British public deserves a chance to say thank you to him.

He is an outlier. He is one of our greatest living sportsmen, some would say the greatest of all, and if this year is to be the year when he calls it quits, he will deserve all the plaudits and all the gratitude that come his way.

CHELSEA’S TACKY STUNT 

I had started to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, the owners who have turned Chelsea into a clown-show had decided it might be better if they ducked out of the limelight for a little while. 

It felt that, maybe, they had tired of telling English football how it could improve itself with an All-Star Game. It felt as if, finally, they might be allowing Mauricio Pochettino to try to stop the club being regarded as a laughing stock.

That idea, sadly, was blown out of the water on Saturday when Chelsea’s victory over Fulham was disfigured by a tacky, low-grade, ill-conceived publicity stunt for a tacky, low-grade, third-rate movie in which Chelsea’s co-owner, Todd Boehly, has a financial interest. 

I don’t quite have the stomach to pore over the details of the stunt, save to say it involved men in garish jackets standing up in a line behind Pochettino’s dug-out at intervals to brush their teeth or read a book. It was the kind of thing that made you cringe.

Chelsea are a proud institution. They were playing in a local derby. Their fans deserve better than having their club hijacked for cheap publicity for bad movies.

DEENEY’S DIFFERENT APPROACH 

Troy Deeney grew up in the school of hard knocks. Take that literally because that’s how it is meant. If you look at him and think his teeth look crooked, it’s because he wants to keep them that way to remind himself of what he went through when he was punched in the mouth by his father as a kid.

So you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t join in the horrified reaction to the rather forthright criticisms he has aimed at his Forest Green Rovers players in the weeks since he took over as manager.

‘I would have preferred to watch Antiques Roadshow,’ Deeney said after his side’s defeat to Harrogate Town at the weekend, observing there were ‘too many babies’ in his line-up. We have grown used to the conventional wisdom that everything must be kept ‘in-house’ in football and that players must be protected at all times.

It is not a bad philosophy but it has left Forest Green rock bottom of League Two, seven points adrift from safety. Deeney has apologised to one player at whom he aimed particularly personal criticism and that feels like a wise move.

But he has clearly decided a different approach is needed and that it’s time to tell under-achieving players a few home truths. It’s a bold call but Deeney is no stranger to making those.