We must stop counting the cost of tennis failure

But today in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, a couple of players who you've almost certainly never heard of will have the opportunity to condemn a Great Britain team lacking Andy Murray to the wastelands of international tennis oblivion in their Davis Cup Europe/Africa Group Two tie.

Defeat for Britain over the next few days would be like Manchester United ending up in the Ryman League.

Ours is a country with an annual tennis budget of £43million, a state-of-the-art national performance centre that must be the envy of the world, the inspiration to all would-be players that is the incomparable Wimbledon and a team today that have as their No1 James Ward.

The Londoner ranked 250 in the world carries an absurd burden of expectation on his shoulders, borne of years of underachievement by his predecessors.

So why, in the absence of Murray, does Davis Cup captain John Lloyd not have half a dozen top-100 players to select from, as his counterpart in many European countries would do?

Unlike most sports, you can tell by the age of 16 whether a tennis player is going to make it, so talent identification at an early age is the key — talent in terms of ability to play the game but also, and often more importantly, in terms of commitment and attitude.

Over the past decade I have seen the Lawn Tennis Association spend fortunes on young players who were clearly never going to make it in the sport because they were weak individuals and not particularly athletic.

It isn't always the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog, and 14, 15 or 16-year-olds who aren't that bothered about losing are not going to be suddenly transformed into snarling champions with the killer instinct.

Put simply, the game is far too expensive. Lessons cost too much. The player base is too limited in terms of background of individuals whose parents can afford to set them out on the path to a competitive career.

Junior tennis at too early an age requires monstrous commitment from mums and dads in a way that no other sport does. You never know when the game is going to take place. You never know how long your child is going to remain in the tournament. Travel costs. Hotel bills. Money, money, money.

It's not like that in team sports, so at the first sign of a wavering of interest from the child, parents are delighted to divert their attentions to a sport less time and finance consuming.

There are many other factors but, fundamentally, we have to spot the talent before cost takes them down an alternative route and then coach them properly. If we continue not to do that, we're heading for future Davis Cup ties against the likes of Vanuatu and the Falkland Isles.

Just in case you don't know, Lithuania is classed as a semi-presidential democracy'. I don't know what that means either. But defeat for Lloyd's team this weekend will mean the LTA will have trouble convincing many people that Britain is anything more than a semi-serious tennis nation.

Look out, the Russians are coming

Not too far from Lithuania, perhaps the biggest sporting story of the week crept by virtually unnoticed when Russia qualified for the Rugby World Cup Finals for the first time.

For the development of the global game, this could be rugby's equivalent of football's 'Africa moment'.

The establishment of a professional league and investment into the sport by one of the country's super-wealthy businessmen means that a nation of 142 million which, up to now, has had rather a rag-tag collection of hundreds of clubs, will now see its best players on the biggest stage of all in New Zealand next year.

Olympic recognition in 2016, which has captured the imagination of countries like China, suddenly opens up the possibility of the cosy cartel of eight or nine nations dominating the latter stages of the World Cup — as has been the case since its inception in 1987 — being seriously under threat within the next decade.

Russia's avowed ambition is to be World Cup quarter-finalists in Japan in 2019 and potential winners thereafter. Sunday's 21-21 draw with Romania may in hindsight be seen as the day when, on the international stage, Wallabies, Pumas and Springboks were first warned of the danger of being devoured by bears.

Reasons to be cheerful

At 8 o'clock on Wednesday night, I thought our chances of winning the World Cup were as good as our tennis team's chances of winning the entire Davis Cup. Egypt may not be Brazil. Or Italy. Or Spain.

But the commitment and resolution etched on the faces of Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard sprouted spring-like seeds of hope.

Suddenly, it's not that fanciful. If the date isn't in your diary already — the final's on 11 July.