It’s not Andy Murray’s fault that he’s playing in the same era as Novak Djokovic

Whatever the explanation, the Murray of yesterday morning was palpably beaten from the start

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After any painful defeat in a national sport, the British instinctively seek sanctuary in the one sport at which we never lose. That is Association Scapegoating, needless to spell out. And the search for someone to blame for the fifth and latest in Andy Murray’s unprecedented run of Australian Open final defeats unearths two leading candidates.

One is the Murray baby due in a fortnight, or rather the timing whereby Kim, his missus, fell pregnant nine months before the season’s first grand slam event. Nothing is more ruinous to the concentration than waiting for an imminent first child. If it’s unnerving enough when you work an hour from the maternity hospital, imagine how unsettling it must be at 12,000 miles’ remove? I hope this doesn’t imply a perverted sense of priorities, but Kim and Andy’s failure to wait another month before conceiving was grossly irresponsible.

The other main candidate is the widely unrecognised genius of someone who left his mother’s womb in May 1987 a week after the Scot left his. When one recalls that Murray lost four Aussie Open finals to him before he was an expectant father, Novak Djokovic may have the edge over the unborn in the scapegoat stakes.

Whatever the explanation, the Murray of yesterday morning was palpably beaten from the start. Back when he was a genuine rival to the long-chinned Serb, a friend and I debated striking Faustian pacts. We have both worshipped him since he emerged as an outlandishly gifted 16-year-old with legs that splayed, after two hours of play, like a new born fawn.

As his 2012 US Open final against Djokovic headed into its fifth set, I asked that friend if he would be willing to be on the passive end of a coupling with Eric Pickles to secure our beautiful boy – at that point a four-time losing major finalist – his first grand slam title. “At this stage, mate,” he replied, “I’d be on the passive end of congress with Eric Pickles for one break point.”

After the first few games yesterday, my latest proposed deal involved the deal-maker supreme. Was he willing to be on the passive end of a Donald Trump presidency, I asked that friend, for a first Australian Open victory? Despondently, he shook his head. “No point discussing it,” he mumbled. “Nothing can save our lovely boy here.”

Nothing did. A dismal first set laden with unforced errors gave way to improvement and deceptively close scorelines in the second and third. But never for an instant did you believe he had a prayer – and neither, from the body language, did he.

The ranting at his verbal punchbags in the players’ box was largely replaced, as forehand after forehand hit the net, by a mad grin; the kind of deranged rictus which, when viewed on a fellow public transport traveller’s face, has you muttering, “I beg of you, Lord, don’t let him sit next to me.”

Another expression also suggested a character even older and more tortured than Jasper Carrott’s nutter on the bus. It was Sisyphus’s look of savage resignation as he pushed that rock up the hill yet again. Murray was going through the motions knowing the outcome, too well aware he could not reach the summit if Djokovic waited across the net to push him back down.

If Murray entered the match with the aura of the archetypal lamb, then Djokovic is on the verge of being acclaimed as tennis’s GOAT (greatest of all time). He isn’t as sexy or as charismatic as Rafael Nadal (who would have dark, erotic dreams about Lembit Opik’s Slavic cousin?), or anything like as graceful and bedazzling as Roger Federer. All he has going for him is that he seems to be better at tennis than them, or anyone else who ever lived.

Djokovic is literally flawless: there is no chink of vulnerability in any aspect of his game. He has exquisite touch, which he uses sparsely, to back up the automaton relentlessness. He has unparalleled mental resilience, winning time and again from match-point down.

During tennis’s most golden era, he dominates as completely as anyone ever has. If he remains fit for another three or four years, he will surpass Federer’s record of 17 grand slam titles. The only player with a serious chance of beating him at a major event now is Stan Wawrinka, but the bullishly powerful Swiss with the nuclear one-handed background is too inconsistent to be a regular threat.

For Andy Murray, the Fed, a fast-fading Rafa and the others living under the Djokovic dominion, reaching a major final is the realistic peak of their ambition. Plagued by the accumulated psychic scar tissue of so many painful defeats to the Serb, their most promising game-changing tactic would be to spend more time with the pins and gluten-free voodoo dolls.

None of this defeatism diminishes Andy Murray’s status as an all time great himself, since no one with two grand slam final victories over Djokovic, an Olympic gold medal and a one-man Davis Cup triumph is less than that. Nor does it lessen the quasi-paternal feelings of my friend and me. If anything, in fact, we love him more than ever after another January fortnight spent getting up for him in the middle of the night and enduring his screechy tantrums.

Andy will understand that soon enough.

And since his sense of priorities seem less bizarre than mine, he will appreciate that parenthood is more important than winning grand slam trophies – and that there are worse fates than being the planet’s number two tennis player when the number one is the best of all time.