The health, safety and lives of players, staff and spectators so obviously override mere Wimbledon. How could that ever have been in doubt?
Hung juries have taken less time than the All England Club to convict a villain as bang to rights as coronavirus. When the club’s board emerged from three days and several hours of teleconference pondering on Wednesday afternoon to confirm that the 134th Wimbledon championships would, indeed, be cancelled, because the killer is still stalking not just the pleasant environs of London SW19 but the entire globe, the question was: what took you so long?
There was a carefully worded statement of the obvious. When Ian Hewitt, the new chairman, said: “This is a decision that we have not taken lightly”, it had the merit of authenticity about it. Wimbledon had self-isolated in line with government guidelines of saying as little as possible in difficult circumstances.
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