Andy and Jamie Murray pressure Wimbledon chiefs after Djokovic match stopped

Dale Vince claims rain stopped play at Wimbledon more than protesters

Andy and Jamie Murray have piled the pressure on Wimbledon chiefs to alter the timings at the All England Club after Novak Djokovic fell foul of the evening curfew on Sunday night. The Serb moved into a two-set lead over Hubert Hurkacz in their fourth-round meeting on Centre Court but the umpire was forced to stop play before 11pm due to the strict rules in place at SW19.

It came after Andy Murray found himself in a similar situation against Stefanos Tsitsipas earlier in the tournament just after the Scot had taken a narrow one-set lead over his Greek opponent. The stoppage resulted in Murray losing the momentum he had gained over the course of the evening before eventually losing to Tsitsipas in five sets the next day.

Murray has since hinted that he would like to see changes made to the timings of play with the aim of solving the issues posed by the existing 11pm curfew. He retweeted an article by The Times on Sunday night calling for Wimbledon chiefs to scrap 1.30pm starts by moving everything back at least an hour, which would help to get matches done before the nightly cut-off point.

Jamie Murray also threw his support behind the suggestion by poking fun at Djokovic’s match being suspended in a direct reply to the original tweet. He simply wrote: “Another night. Confirmed.”

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The Wimbledon curfew has been in place since 2009, when Centre Court’s roof opened for the first time, with the measures being introduced by Merton Council in order to obtain planning permission for the roof. There are generally no exceptions to the curfew but it was pushed back slightly in 2012 when Andy Murray defeated Marcos Baghdatis with the clock striking 11.02pm.

Murray was left frustrated when his match against Tsitsipas was halted by the umpire last week with 20 minutes remaining until the official cut-off point. Boos rang out around Centre Court when the decision was announced, while Murray also seemed to be unhappy and was heard asking tournament referee Gerry Armstong: “Why?”

Many fans on Twitter went on to suggest that Murray would have beaten Tsitsipas if the match had not been stopped and resumed the following day, with @kamal_1111 posting: “You guys literally cost Murray the match. For God’s sake, we are not playing Test match cricket where you come the next day and continue. Get your things together.”

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@TheTennisTalker said: “I blame the Wimbledon curfew. Murray would have won last night,” while @LEACH_96 added: “He has the match won last night! The rules screwed him.”

Murray, however, later admitted that it was the right call to stop the match after three sets as there was no time to complete a potentially decisive fourth set before the 11pm curfew.

“I didn’t necessarily think it was appropriate to keep going, because it was highly unlikely we’d finish the match unless someone was to win the set,” said Murray. “Sorry, it was unlikely someone was going to win that set in 20 minutes or 19 minutes, whatever we had left to play. It seemed like a reasonable time to stop.”

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