SIDELINE CUT:The Scottish star has to bear the burden of the torch handed down to him by Fred Perry and Tim Henman, writes KEITH DUGGAN

WHO WOULD be Andy Murray? Even in faraway Australia this week, all eyes were on the lanky Scotsman yesterday morning as he battled against Novak Djokovic for a place in the Open final. Just 24 hours after a transcendent battle of minds between Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal, the great white hope once again attempted to serve and volley the British game back into the big time.

GB’s search for a localised tennis champion has become Arthurian. England have never quite gotten over Fred Perry, who won Wimbledon titles with panache in the 1930s as well as fraternising with matinee idols like Marlene Dietrich and all the time looking like David Niven’s brawnier younger brother might have done. It is something of a mystery that Blighty has never managed to produce anyone to emulate Perry in the decades since.

There are mitigating circumstances, not least the fact that tennis became established as the favoured pastime of opulent Americans and impoverished Eastern Europeans seeking escape.

England, with its gloomy winters and showery summers, doesn’t have a climate that lends itself to night after night of street tennis: young proteges must be manufactured rather than naturally bloom. And tennis will always be shoved to the side by the popular might of football.

Still, you would think that some freak of nature – the strapping grandson of a Russian émigré or an inner city youngster who wanted nothing more in the world than to be like Jimmy Connors – would have come along and maybe snatched just one major title from the glacial Björns and Stefans or the screaming Petes and Superbrats who bestrode the stage in the 1980s and 1990s.

Tennis suits the English, with its fondness of tradition and etiquette, its polite clapping and handshakes all round, characteristics which define the fortnight of play at Wimbledon every July, when all of the Queen’s subjects go slightly daffy over the grass-court game.

It is a dangerous thing to be British and fairly good at tennis, as Tim Henman discovered. Henman lived out a highly successful sporting career enduring an insane level of expectation from his countrymen. It reached the stage where his winning a major title – and preferably at Wimbledon – became a patriotic duty rather than an aspiration.

He was in the horrible position of being exceptionally good without ever being quite brilliant enough to eclipse even the waning powers of Sampras or the hyperactive Lleyton Hewitt or Goran Ivanisevic during his purple patch.

Little wonder that among the viewers around the world who became fascinated with Henman’s gallant attempts to live up to public expectations was JD Salinger, the revered author. For Salinger, who spent his adult life guarding his right to a private life, the way that England took possession of Henman during the years when he seemed poised to do something wonderful in Wimbledon must have been the stuff of his worst nightmares.

But letters he wrote to an English friend reveal not just his admiration for Henman but for the player’s parents, who maintained a proud but low-key presence in the stands for Henman’s on-court triumphs and heartbreaks and all the time evinced a sense of caring for their son rather than for their tennis star.

Even as Henman’s star was beginning to fade, Murray’s was in the ascent. It hardly made sense: a Scottish tennis star. Only a Welsh singles star would have been odder. There aren’t even that many tennis courts in Scotland, let alone players.

It would have been a much easier life for the temperamental Scotsman had he thrown in his lot with Rangers FC at the age of 15 and maybe fashioned a career as a bony-elbowed number 10 idol at Ibrox and scourge of Parkhead. That would have been a perfectly fine career for any athletic Scotsman.

But Murray went solo and ascended the professional ranks with lightning speed reminiscent of Henman’s early career and since his late teens, he found himself holding the torch that Henman had lit.

“It is never difficult to distinguish between a ray of sunshine and a Scotsman with a grievance,” wrote PG Wodehouse and Murray often did his best to prove that true, at times petulant in his public dealings and often cutting a tortured figure on the court. His light-hearted joke about supporting anyone but England in the World Cup was predictably seized upon and filleted by the tabloids and even though Tim Henman had clarified that it had been a joke, he has been explaining it ever since.

Yesterday morning, Murray engaged in an old-fashioned baseline slog with Djokovic, with rallies that seemed to go on for minutes on end and torpedoed serves. It couldn’t have been any different to the transcendent semi-final from the previous day, in which Roger Federer left stardust all over the hard court with an array of instinctive drop shots and feathered rallies which left the crowd gasping and the television men literally lost for words. But he also left a stunning number of x marks where his unforced errors had fallen as Nadal, with his unwavering, Terminator’s approach, seemed to jump from the court and into Federer’s mind. You could see the Swiss, after a bewildering opening 20 minutes, slowly begin to falter and to second guess himself as Nadal worked the Indian sign that he has had over Federer once again.

And so Nadal, with the rest of Australia, watched yesterday morning to see who he would meet in the final. As predicted, it was a marathon: the match went into the fifth set, continuing long after the public transport from the Rod Laver arena had finished for the evening.

And who couldn’t support Murray as he struggled to match the Serbian, wailing and gnashing his teeth in the third game of the fifth set and then producing a drop shot followed by a lob to win a crucial point after a fabulous rally. Djokovic looked perturbed for a half a second and then served an ace. Up in the stands, Ivan Lendl watched on as his protégé showed increasing signs of fallibility as the match went into its fifth hour but still managed to produce moments of brilliance.

It is an odd mix, the inscrutable star of the 1980s and the volatile Scotsman. Lendl was alone in remaining seated when Murray took the match to 5-5 in the last: Murray may have to wait until he lifts a trophy before he sees Lendl rise in ovation. Yesterday, Murray did everything that Lendl could have asked for, brave with both heart and racket in an enthralling game.

But Djokovic won anyway, breaking Murray down with a series of stinging returns and drawing a standing ovation. So another Grand Slam tournament passes and Murray is no closer to bridging the gap to the halcyon days of Fred Perry.

He is still only 24 and has time on his side. Hopes will fly high at Wimbledon this summer and Murray, even as he is yet to gather an Open title, is winning friends.

But for now, Albion awaits a new champion and Murray remains the only hope.