I awoke this morning wondering what banana skin in Latvian might be.

Well you do don't you if you're a Murray-minded patriotic Brit at Wimbledon and you've heard rumours about Ernests Gulbis - a 20-year-old from Riga who appears to have something of the sorcerer's art ingested in his game.

Andy Murray faces Gulbis on Centre Court on Thursday, and if you had watched in horror as Maria Sharapova came a cropper on a banana skin from Argentina called Gisela Dulko, you might have begun to think as I did that this indeed could be the year of banana skins. I mean the screaming former champion here isn't just a pretty face.

While the Fourth Estate was busy pursuing their annual probe into what's wrong with British tennis, I thought I'd ask the former Russian television commentator and leading player Alexander Metreveli why there are so many Russian players doing so well all the time.

"Not just Russian players, the whole region," he said. "But why?" I persisted. His reply was instant and completely serious: "They all want to be like Sharapova. They see what she has become and that's what they all want."

But Maria Sharapova on Wednesday was unrecognisable from the champion of 2004. She looked like a great actress who had forgotten her lines and had been struck by stage fright.

She was steering the ball not clouting it. Gisela is a durable spoiler, but normally you would expect Maria to regally dispose of her. But Sharapova has had nine months out of the game and shoulder surgery - five tournaments isn't sufficient preparation for Wimbledon, so no comeback for her yet.

Reverting to banana skins, it looked as if the Spaniard Tommy Robredo had stumbled on one from Austria called Stefan Koubek, but Spaniards in sport these days are made of sterner stuff and Robredo took the final set 6-1.

Serbia star Novak Djokovic, who's seeded to meet the impeccable Roger Federer in the semi-finals, disposed of a German qualifier that not even the German journalist sitting next to me had ever heard of.

"Completely unknown," he said, "completely unknown". A good story that one, and so is this.

Djokovic, or perhaps his family, have bought a Major tournament from the Dutch and are now staging it in Belgrade.

Looking down Thursday's order of play, I am immediately struck by the first match on Centre Court between Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina and Lleyton Hewitt, becasue the draw opens up all kinds of possibility for the winner of that match.

Where do good players come from? I've said it so many times before, they are inspired by others and I'm assured by one of my colleagues that Del Potro has been inspired by Guillermo Vilas.

Vilas, according to the Argentine journalist, has inspired the whole of the game in Argentina and it has simply boomed since he was playing and winning so many matches.

Finally, a nightmare post script regarding young Ernests Gulbis, as even the British cabinet ministers have entered the annual storm over the state of British tennis - triggered this time by what was probably an unthinking post-match remark by Murray.

Should we declare a march on LTA headquarters if Gulbis' silky skills do trip him up? Hey, I could take part in that as president of Carmarthen Town Tennis Club.