Wimbledon 2013: Andy Murray deserves to be cherished This was the trick it played on Fernando Verdasco on Wednesday, handing him the first two sets like some demonic card dealer and then snatching them back with Murray's victory. Only the one-on-one sports give you this apocalyptic edge. Only they can telescope a winning opportunity (or its opposite, damnation) into a single serve or a backhand drive down the line. Often in the press box at Wimbledon I try to imagine how the body, the brain, might react to a ball sitting up nicely for dispatch, at match point in a semi-final, with 10 million watching on television and the whole of Centre Court demanding one-shot gratification. The answer, of course, is that most of us would end up spontaneously combusting or in need of a blanket and a cup of tea from the St John Ambulance brigade. We would blow it 99 times out of a hundred. And the hundredth would be luck. Even at the elite professional level, where there are only millionaires and nice lives, you can watch Murray against Jerzy Janowicz for a place in the Wimbledon men's final and marvel at how far he has come: from the massacre at Dunblane that rendered him speechless and weepy in a recent BBC documentary, from all those years in the shadow of Federer, Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Mostly, Murray has escaped his role as the Fourth Man in a golden age: the one who sniffed around the edges of the biggest wins but would always be whipped in the showdown grand slam matches. If Federer was born to greatness, Murray has tried harder to acquire it than any living British sportsman, taking his licks in four grand slam final defeats, refusing to be shaken off by the big three and sculpting himself into a warrior instead of the wimp middle England said he was when he found a Wimbledon rival just too good for him. Many of us would have to plead guilty to thinking he would never make the transition from good player to great. His self-sabotaging moodiness seemed bound to stop him flying as high as Federer or Nadal. There were times when you felt Sir Alex Ferguson would be more use as his manager than his supporter, to rid him of his faintly apologetic air on Centre Court. Reading the reviews of his comeback against Verdasco there was still a whiff of accusation: that Murray nearly messed it up, that he should never have been in that position in the first place (despite facing a lefty for the first time this year), and that he is still only one big sulk away from disaster. Others pointed out that two years ago he would have lost to Verdasco. The theatricality remains, but the difference is that Murray now expects to win that kind of match, while in the past he only aspired to. No modern British sportsman either has faced such a withering array of obstacles. Now Djokovic has passed beyond mere self-control to an almost frightening mastery of the game. If the two meet on Sunday, no one could ignore the truth that Murray has lost five of the six grand slam finals he has contested. But the one he won, against Djokovic in New York last year, is his lifelong guarantee of credibility in the finest era tennis has known. In both these final rounds - assuming he beats Janowicz - he starts as a winner, as someone who refused to bow to the evidence casting him as a nearly man. To watch a player always at the far edge of his abilities is a privilege we too often take for granted. Wayne Rooney's vote of no confidence Wayne Rooney's strategic error in indicating that he wanted to leave Manchester United after their league title win has come back to haunt him. The first time he expressed restlessness, in the autumn of 2010, Manchester City were standing by to inflate his wages. The cards still fell in Rooney's favour. A last-minute intervention by the Glazers raised his salary to around £250,000 a week. All the power lay with the player. This time, he announced the possibility that he might leave without a clear destination in mind - and before he learnt that Sir Alex Ferguson was retiring. The word is that United will not be selling to Chelsea, Arsenal or any Premier League rival. Nor should they feel compelled to, given the lengths they went to three years ago to keep him out of City's reach. Upsetting the club's wage structure was seen as a necessary evil in the face of a dire threat from the noisy neighbours. Rooney's bargaining power has greatly reduced. No superpower club could sign him without reservations about his form and fitness. United would manage fine without him. But how would he get on without them? Sorry to report: what we are seeing now is all political. Warren Gatland has committed crime against creativity Dropping Brian O'Driscoll for the final Lions Test was very un-Welsh. Warren Gatland, the tourists" Kiwi coach, stands accused of favouring his other team - Wales - by picking 10 of the Six Nations champions, including the two centres, Jonathan Davies and Jamie Roberts. But no Welsh rugby lover would reject the O'Driscoll's creativity, a sacred virtue in Gatland's adopted homeland. This is the most ludicrous demotion in living memory, and not just because O'Driscoll had never been dropped by any team in 15 years. It is a crime against artistry, in favour of physicality: a nonsense in any language, including Welsh.