As Davis Cup burden leans heavily on Andy Murray, he says team spirit will see off France

It was a bold move from France captain Arnaud Clement, who suggested it was “logical” because Gasquet had less time to recover from his Wimbledon efforts than the rest of his team.

But in Gilles Simon, who opens proceedings today against James Ward, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who will play Murray, they have an embarrassment of riches which is likely to make it extremely difficult for Britain and increase the burden on Murray.

The world No.3 yesterday took a bit of umbrage when he was asked whether he felt this was the “opportunity of a lifetime” to win a competition that, before this year, had been an impossibility as Britain languished in the lower levels of the competition.

Instead, Murray, a semi-finalist at Wimbledon himself, stressed the importance of the entire squad who’ve helped him get to this point.

“We’re here as a team,” he said after the draw ceremony, held in the London offices of BNP Paribas, the Davis Cup’s title sponsor.

“Everyone’s played their part in getting us here from Leon [Smith] to the players to all of the staff. Everyone has been in this together.

“I wouldn’t say that winning this year is the chance of a lifetime because we’re playing against a great team. It’s not like this is an amazing opportunity because the draw has opened up and this is an easy match or we had an easy path through to the final.

“This is an extremely tough tie. Beating the United States was hard as well. It’s an opportunity, obviously, but an opportunity of a lifetime? For me, personally, no. I don’t agree with that at all.”

It was an interesting response from the man who, for all the efforts in Davis Cup over the past two years and the climb into the top 100 of James Ward, remains by far Britain’s top player and the man on whom his side’s hopes rest.

But Murray has a lot of faith in Ward, with whom he’s struck up a good friendship in recent years. Not only that, he’s been impressed enough with his work ethic to have invited him out for training in Florida and has offered the Englishman plenty of advice.

More advice will have been forthcoming last night as the team had dinner together again, as they’ve been doing each night since getting together at the start of the week.

“We’re all staying together in the same hotel,” Smith said. “It’s a really important part of the week. We have to be together in the evenings, be around each other. That creates the special team spirit as we go into the weekend.”

Murray’s admission earlier in the week that he is still struggling to shake off the disappointment of losing in the semi-finals at Wimbledon has placed an even bigger onus on Smith to raise his team once again.

But the Scot, whose role in their success cannot be overstated, said he was confident they would give everything to reach the last four.

“100 per cent they’ll dig deep,” he said. “Every one of these guys and the others that played before them in different ties have given 100 per cent when playing for Great Britain and it won’t change this weekend.

“There’s no doubt there will be some aches and pains and a bit of tiredness from a long grass-court season and midway through this year it’s demanding for them. But you’ll see no lack of desire, effort, passion to try and win the matches.”

The one problem for Britain is that Ward is no longer an unknown quantity, from a French point of view. His win over John Isner in the first-round victory over the United States caused that, but he’s also well known to Simon.

“I know Gilles better than the others,” Ward said. “I practise with him a lot, so he knows my game as well as I know his. I just need to stay aggressive, try to play my game, not worry too much about him and see how I get on.”

If Ward can pull off another unlikely win, it will give Murray and the rest of the team a massive boost. If not, it will be down to Murray to see off Tsonga, who remains dangerous, even if Murray leads their head-to-head record 10-2 and has won all four of their meetings on grass.