KYLE Edmund could have been a professional cricketer right now if he hadn’t preferred the buzz of an individual sport like tennis. The 23-year-old, the sole standard bearer for the home singles challenge at this year’s Wimbledon, eventually got hit for six by a vengeful Novak Djokovic yesterday but not before he was involved in an astonishing incident which just wasn’t cricket.

Going on court in the immediate aftermath of England’s World Cup quarter final win against Sweden, before a crowd fuelled by sizeable mid-afternoon quantities of Pimm’s, he found Centre Court a boisterous place yesterday evening. Too boisterous, said Novak Djokovic, even by comparison with the times he played Andy Murray here. You can draw your own conclusions about that.

Anyway, visitors to SW19 yesterday were dreaming of a second Sunday to end them all when Edmund held his nerve to win the first set against the 12-time Grand Slam winner. Surely we couldn’t have an Englishman winning at the All England Club on the same day as England ended 52 years of hurt?

At that point Djokovic felt like the world was against him. But instead he started to revel in his status as pantomime villain, particularly after being issued with a time violation.

The Serb took the next two sets, either shushing and cupping his ear at the crowd as he went, and sensed the chance to land the killer blow at 3-3 in the fourth when a ground stroke which landed on the line was called out, then corrected by umpire Jake Garner.

There then followed one of the more remarkable points ever witnessed at Wimbledon as Edmund, chasing down a Djokovic drop shot, was narrowly unable to reach the ball before its second bounce. While his racket, which he dropped as he played it, sent the ball narrowly into the tramlines, his momentum took him into the net. In short, that was three ways at least that the point, and the game, should have gone to Djokovic.

Yet Edmund carried on as if nothing had happened, and to the disbelief of the Serb, who was clearly too convinced by the double bounce to challenge the call, Jake Garner awarded it to the Yorkshireman. A few points later, he held serve too. Everyone felt the World Cup would dominate proceedings yesterday but few expected we would end up talking about a VAR controversy.

If social media was ablaze with the suggestion that Edmund, like a cricketer who gets a fine nick to the wicket keeper, should have walked, he didn’t feel he had done anything wrong. Others reckon it might be a stain on his character.

“What do you mean ‘the double bounce?’,” said Edmund. “If in real life, it’s hard to tell, then its’ hard to tell for me when I’m scrambling. We need the umpire to get off his chair and go to the TV monitor on the side.”

“It was quite a strange situation, to be honest,” admitted Djokovic, rather calmer about the situation than he would have been if he hadn’t broken in the very next Edmund service game and served out for a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 win. “First of all, how does [the umpire] think it's possible that Kyle hits the shot that he hit so clean and so flat and fast if he hit it with the frame. If you hit it with the frame, it's supposed to kind of slow down the trajectory of the ball.

"I was 100% convinced it was twice," he said. "I heard from people that it was. Anybody can make a mistake. That's okay. But I don't understand why he didn't allow me to challenge the ball.”

The 31-year-old, who now faces Karen Khachanov of Russia, took more umbrage about the actions of the crowd, which he felt overstepped the mark. “It was a Davis Cup-like atmosphere, I expected them to support Kyle obviously,” he said. “But at times they were slightly unfair to me. A couple of guys were pretending they were coughing and whistling while I was bouncing the ball. Those are the things obviously that people don't get to see or hear on the TV. I just think it's not necessary.

“I played Andy a couple times here. I played him at the Olympic Games. I played him Wimbledon. It was not like this, definitely. The crowd was very fair when I played against Andy. But today there was just some people, especially behind that end where I got the time violation, they kept on going, they kept on provoking. That's something I can tolerate for a little bit, but I'm going to show that I'm present, as well, that they can't do whatever they feel like doing.”

Thrown a googly by this World Cup, the All England Club have banned footage from any of the big screens – even pulling down blinds to stop punters staring in the press room windows. Their master plan just about worked yesterday, even if Sir Bobby Charlton, the only England captain to get his hands on the World Cup, was in one of the few places he couldn’t actually watch the match.

Djokovic wasn’t the only former winner here showing signs of getting back to his best yesterday, with Rafa Nadal making light work of talented Aussie teenager Alex de Minaur in a 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 win. Another Aussie, Nick Kyrgios, exited the competition too, after a maddeningly erratic showing against Kei Nishikori. No 4 seed Alex Zverev tumbled to Ernests Gulbis in five sets, but No 5 seed Juan Martin del Potro looks an increasing threat after his straight-sets win against Benoit Paire of France.