15-0: to declare an interest, I am in general a fan of his. I love his intensity, his will to win, his thick streak of Balkan craziness: and I’ve also seen him be an exceptionally gracious loser (I wrote in the Mail on Sunday in 2013 that his speech at Wimbledon having succumbed to Andy Murray in the final should be circulated to every schoolchild in the country.) I know he’s substantially less popular than Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Perhaps that’s something else that makes me like him. They may be more charming in public, but deep down they are just as self-centred stone cold killers as he is, and in all three cases I mean that as a compliment. (It’s also almost like he was named for all this, with the Novax Djocovid puns. Roger Federal-Government and Rafael Needle just don’t have the same ring to them.)

15-15: I am also in general a fan of two concepts which are sometimes related: actions have consequences, and any country has laws you should obey, so if you don’t like those laws then don’t go to that country. But this case runs far deeper than that, and indeed far deeper than the simplistic and binary divisions inevitably prescribed to it. This is the perfect story for our fractured, atomised times, inviting us to pick one of two extreme positions and dig in. In the public discourse, Djokovic is presented either as a reckless, ignorant, selfish prick or as a lone, quasi-messianical crusader against the forces of darkness. Neither is true, or at least neither is totally true, and to reduce one of sport’s most complex characters to either is to do both him and this case a disservice. To layman and medical eyes alike there’s a lot of woo in what Djokovic says and does, with his extreme dieting, alternative remedies and the like: but he’s not wrong in that we could all live more healthily and simply both for our own good and that of the planet, and even if he doesn’t have all the right answers he is at least asking some of the right questions.

30-15: it isn’t wrong either to question public coronavirus policies or to turn down a vaccine. There are plenty of aspects of the UK government’s policies I object to, let alone the Australian government’s, though only the first directly affect me. I thought long and hard, and read widely, before deciding to have the vaccinations, and I did so as much for the public good as my own since this is clearly an unusual public health crisis. But in general I don’t like to take any more medicine than I absolutely have to, and prefer to keep myself fit and my own immune system healthy. Some reasons to refuse a vaccine are good and rational, others loopy-loo crackpot. But if as a government you can’t persuade people to take up the offer, then that’s a failure of your ability to influence their behaviour. The idea that you can rectify that failure by mandatory vaccinations or punishment for refuseniks, as is being mooted in Austria (and France, if Macron gets his way), fills me with horror: massive state overreach totally at odds with any considerations of liberal democracy. If you support mandatory vaccinations, here’s one word for you: Tuskegee.

30-30: that this case has been so badly handled is both astonishing and entirely predictable. In any sensible world, it would have been sorted out even before it was an issue. Djokovic is a nine-time Melbourne champion and the world’s most famous anti-vaxxer: Australia is one of the world’s most locked-down countries. It doesn’t take a genius to see that here, unless properly dealt with, would be a case of matches meeting gasoline. It could hardly have been beyond the wit of man to get a virtual meeting between the three interested parties - Djokovic’s camp, the tournament organisers and the Australian authorities - and hammer it out.

40-30: that failure, and Scott Morrison’s ludicrous grandstanding, has ensured that even in the eyes of many who don’t especially like him Djokovic is more sinned against than sinning. He seems to have gone to Australia in good faith having been assured he passed the criteria for medical exemption. He has been treated with no special favours, which is right, but also at times with seemingly little regard for his situation and rights, which is wrong. And the fact that even now, having won the appeal, he can still be unilaterally banned by the Immigration Minister Alex Hawke is absurd. What are courts for if politicians can override their decisions? When the executive has precedence over the judiciary like this, you’re in very murky waters as to the kind of society you’re living in. If Hawke doesn’t use that power - as he shouldn’t - and Djokovic goes on to win this tournament, it will in every way be his Grand Slam victory forged most in adversity, and perhaps a fitting way to move ahead of Federer and Nadal.

Game: the domestic power and role of a world-class sportsman from a small and/or developing country can rarely be overestimated. Ayrton Senna and Brazil, George Weah and Liberia, Frankie Fredericks and Namibia: for Serbia, Djokovic is all of these rolled together and more. In the West, Serbia is still seen in largely negative terms: aggressors in the Balkan wars, perpetrators of one of the worst massacres in modern times, still kicking its heels for EU membership while other former Yugoslavian republics are welcomed in. Djokovic is for millions of Serbs a one-man antidote to all that, and if he wants to will more likely than not be President one day. Perhaps his first official visit would be to Australia in the spirit of mutual reconciliation.