Andy Murray downs fellow Brit Ryan Peniston in devastating fashion

Since the Battle of the Brits exhibition match put on during Covid, the two-time Wimbledon champion has been a friend, hitting partner and fantasy football combatant with Essex-based Peniston.

But after a shaky start, there was no mercy shown whatsoever as Murray rattled off a 6-3, 6-0, 6-1 win against the world No 268 in just two hours.

It was not quite the Murray of his 2016 vintage best but some of the old traits were there, perhaps inspired by a very special presence on Centre Court alongside the Princess of Wales and Roger Federer. 

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had told him in a radio conversation between the pair last year that listening to commentary of his Wimbledon victory that year had brought her “escape”, briefly, in what would become a six-year imprisonment in Iran while on spying charges.

It was partly due to Murray’s personal intervention that she was invited to watch the action from the Royal Box.

Initially, that 2016 Murray who Zaghari-Ratcliffe had followed so intently would have been all but unrecognisable in the character who shuffled nervously about the baseline giving spiteful glances at the same areas of court that Novak Djokovic had helped mop down 24 hours earlier.

Peniston, who has already won one miraculous battle against childhood cancer, was gifted two unexpected early break points and with some better overheads at the net might have taken advantage of them. Then slowly the Murray old began to find his feet.

It was the 36-year-old who finally got the break in the sixth game with a guttural roar of “Let’s go!” And he did. Murray served out the first set, Peniston double-faulted the first point of the second and it was all one-way traffic from that point on Peniston gamely tried to fight fire with fire, producing some huge left-handed forehands that drew gasps from the Centre Court crowd.

But what would have been winners against lesser mortals were coming back on giant arcs from Murray’s racket that seemed almost to brush the giant struts of the roof before bouncing just inside the baseline.

It almost did not seem fair.

A couple of long rallies drew warm applause for Peniston in the brief moments he was able to stand toe-to-toe with Murray.

However, after sharing the first four games of the match, the 27-year-old managed to win just two of the next 18, a scoreline which told its own story.

Although not one Murray was ever likely to tell his four children having got off court by 6pm for once.