Advantage: Federer: Murray means GB are favourites for Davis Cup

Transport and schools were shut and sporting events cancelled while soldiers patrolled the streets because of the “serious and imminent” threat of a Paris style attack.

Andy Murray’s participation marks Great Britain down as favourites to defeat Belgium and lift the Davis Cup, according to Roger Federer.

“I know it’s a different picture in Brussels and of course there are natural concerns for people who were either opting to stay there or travel through there, but all I can say, and the team can say, is that it is very, very normal in Ghent”. Here in Ghent, everything seems fine.

Politics intruded on the Davis Cup that year, with Moscow ordering the Soviet Union team not to play a semifinal against Chile in protest of Augusto Pinochet’s military junta.

He had hoped to make an early decision on his second singles player between James Ward and Kyle Edmund but the change in their travel plans means he is still yet to make up his mind. They have a fantastic security team here. She was coaching some of the players I would have been playing in the Scottish tournaments. It’s taken like five years.

“The programme focuses on how to deliver simple fun skillbuilding sessions – the types of games that Andy and Jamie loved to play when they were kids, but it can also show creative ways to introduce kids to competition”.

The hosts for the tie, Belgium have chosen clay as the surface for this year’s final in an attempt to limit the threat possessed by Andy Murray, with it his weakest surface by some distance. However, it is now thought his captain Johan Van Herck is moving towards choosing either his third or fourth string – Ruben Bemelmans or Kimmer Coppejans – to play that day and keeping Darcis back for duty in the doubles and a possible deciding fifth rubber on Sunday.

Murray added: “Everyone was a little bit concerned”. So it made the 2005 title match even more of a surprise. I think we as a team have a lot of confidence in the organization. It was a bit concerning a few days ago. “We’re here”, he said.

At the start of the year, they were rank outsiders but they have benefited from the absence of other teams’ key players in victories over Switzerland, Canada and Argentina.

“I think the whole country will be behind us and we will try to keep the trophy here”. I think that is a mark of a great captain and I put Leon Smith in one of those sort of categories. That’s why I didn’t speak to the guys directly about it just yet.

Smith does not have to submit his official four-man team until an hour before the draw on Thursday, and he said: “We wanted to get here and actually get a feel for the venue, a feel for the courts”.

Now as we leave David Lloyd’s comments behind we can, hopefully, look forward to a Davis Cup tie that epitomises the difference between Murray and all the British number ones that have preceded him since the Fred Perry era.