In what has become an annual ritual, the British people enjoy an attack of nerves in July. They call it Henmania.

This has happened quite consistently for the last few years: Tim Henman moves up to the quarters or even further, he gets some of the best crowd support in tennis, he plays up-and-down tennis, sometimes scraping through, sometimes falling by, but always giving his British fans a lot of nervous excitement en route. I've been trying to think of another sporting parallel, especially Indian, but fail to come up with such an occurence that happens so consistently. Perhaps India's annual cup-of-woes at Sharjah about a decade ago would qualify in the amount of expectation and disappointment that Henman provides at Wimbledon each year.

I hope there will be a silver lining for Henman at Wimbledon some day soon.