Great Britains Davis Cup team ready for crunch tie against Lithuania

By Mark Hodgkinson in Lithuania Published: 6:21PM GMT 04 March 2010

Pulling the strings: Britain"s Davis Cup captain John Lloyd (centre) believes his group can overcome the plea of Lithuania Photo: AP

The trickery is declared after an American player and licentious of Lithuanian stock who gathering a yellow automobile Rolls-Royce, partied at New York"s Studio 54, snorted heroin and died of CO monoxide poisoning.

For John Lloyd, Great Britain"s Davis Cup captain, one of his happiest memories of Gerulaitis was the time when they left Studio 54 together at 4 or five in the morning, when the object was entrance up over Manhattan, and they gathering afar in that automobile with the tip down and the girls screaming.

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Since he arrived in the Baltic state, Lloyd has found himself vocalization of small else but his old crony Vitas, about the man who kick him in the last of the 1977 Australian Open, about a player who used to do "some naughty, nasty stuff" off the court, but who was probably fitter than any one on the circuit detached from Bjorn Borg.

And nonetheless this week end could move about an hapless couple in in between Lloyd and Gerulaitis, if events go opposite the Briton at a centre filled with photographs of Vitas, and a span of his old shorts, a shirt and a graphite racket.

If Britain lose this tie in Group Two of the Euro-African Zone, the third multiplication of the competition, it will be Lloyd"s fifth unbroken defeat, and he understands that competence meant "my time could be up".

It would additionally put Britain in to a relegation play-off opposite Ireland or Turkey the week end after Wimbledon, and if they lose that too, they would be as low as you could go in the Davis Cup, down with tennis superpowers such as Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Malta, Moldova and San Marino.

Since Tim Henman late in 2007, Lloyd"s group have unsuccessful to win a tie, but this could be the agonizing week end when Britain, a grand impact republic and one of the founders of the Davis Cup, starts to vanish off the tennis map.

Those who follow tennis usually from their sofas for dual weeks of the year are wondering how a republic that stages the Wimbledon Championships, whose ruling physique has an annual check in additional of �30 million, could find itself personification and presumably losing opposite a nation such as Lithuania, whose tennis association has to get by on around �90,000 a year.

This is a impulse to cruise the actuality that Britain"s Lawn Tennis Association outlayed around half a million last year on free lunches for the players, coaches, visitors and administrators at the inhabitant tennis centre in London: the Lithuanians would probably onslaught to cover the LTA"s check for tea and digestives.

And nonetheless there is a hideous probability that Britain could lose this tie, as, in the deficiency of Andy Murray, who motionless to lay it out, this is the majority fresh British group in history.

Not one of the British players has won a Davis Cup rubber, and usually doubles player Colin Fleming has won a set. Singles player James Ward and doubles dilettante Ken Skupski will be creation their initial appearances.

Britain will not even have the tip ranked player at the indoor tough court. That will be Ricardas Berankis, who was the youth universe No 1, who won the boys" pretension at the 2007 US Open, and who pennyless in to the tip 200 of the men"s diversion after last month reaching the quarter-finals of a contest in San Jose in California.

But, behind home in the shires, that is not going to pass as an forgive that Lithuania have someone ranked 198 in the world. Britain competence be green, but it is not as if they are confronting a group of tougher or stronger veterans, as all 4 of the Lithuanians are still in their teens.

As Lithuania have usually 3 players with universe singles rankings, the fourth mark in the group was motionless with a play-off, that was won by a Lukas Mugevicius, who incited fifteen in December.

Ward, the universe No 250, opens the tie opposite Laurynas Grigelis, the No 521, and Dan Evans, the No 252 who unsuccessful to win a set in his dual singles appearances opposite Poland last September, plays Berankis.

"A lot of the British open appear to think we"re still in the Fred Perry epoch we"re not," pronounced Lloyd. "We"ve one good player. I don"t similar to losing and I haven"t been a happy camper with all the defeats in a row.

"These boys have a good opportunity, and I"m anticipating that they will take it. I"m anxious to be here. I"m not anxious to be in Group Two, but I"m propitious to have the job, and if someone tells that my time is up, my time is up."

One couple in in between the nations is that both No 1 players, Ward and Berankis, are the sons of cab drivers. "It only shows that tennis players can come from working-class family groups and can still paint their country," pronounced Ward, who is due to fool around Berankis on Sunday.

"It"s the proudest impulse of my hold up and my tennis career. A lot of the players at the tip have struggled for majority of their lives for money, and maybe that"s the reason they are at the top. Maybe that has meant that they have longed for it some-more than the rest. We have to get on with it but Murray."

Ward pronounced it was astray to review the budgets of the LTA and the Lithuanian tennis federation. "It"s easy to see at the budgets but it"s not as if the LTA give me millions to do what I wish with. It"s an astray comparison. We get a sure amount, that we are beholden for, and but that I wouldn"t be means to play, but it"s not as though we are since millions.

"I don"t think it comes down to how most income we"ve got, and how most income they haven"t got. We"ll see who does the commercial operation on the court. I think it"s a compare we will win."