May the farce be with you

Djokovic question boils down to whether to deport the entitled fool or expose him to full fury of an Aussie crowd

The saga of Novak Djokovic has, according to every measure, enthralled the media-hungry even in a busy week for front-page villains in the UK.

Djokovic has been up against Boris Johnson and the Duke of York; or, perhaps, we should say he has complemented those stories given they each provoke fury about rules and entitlement and famous men who have a funny way of saying sorry because they are not sorry at all.

The world’s leading tennis player has certainly transcended the sports pages and my sense is that our fascination is because Djokovic has become a lightning rod for our Covid times. This is about his case, and his arrogance, but also so much more.

Are the unvaccinated exerting a reasonable right to control what goes into their own bodies or being irrational and, worst of all, selfish? Try thinking about Djokovic without treading down that road.

It taps into that resentment I suspect many of us have felt on public transport at some stage in the past couple of years faced with someone refusing to wear a mask or respect our space.

Doesn’t it feel as though Djokovic is that maskless figure on public transport sticking up two fingers?

The endless frustrations of lockdowns, of opportunities thwarted and pleasures denied, never mind businesses and lives imperilled, have, I am sure, shortened all our tolerances. As Hugo Rifkind opined last week, Covid has joined the culture wars of polarised opinion.

I could be sure I was in the other camp from Djokovic from the day when professional duty required me to watch a YouTube video in which he claimed that scientists had proven that polluted water can be cleansed through the power of prayer and gratitude, and then began promoting expensive snake oil remedies. Each to their own spirituality – except when it comes to a pandemic and such thinking becomes dangerous rather than just cranky.

It has all left me wishing deportation on a tennis player (from a country where

I am not resident) – which is quite extreme when you think about it – and should probably make me pause at least to wonder whether I am playing the man or the ball. But this is the righteous fury that Djokovic has stirred.

Befitting our times, there is a band of loyalist zealots on the other side for whom their hero is now also a martyr. They lock arms and sing the Serbian anthem and make claims of ‘‘torture’’. We shout at each other from afar.

On both sides, we latch on to all, and any, evidence to prove our cases. I know of a family member who has been unable to visit Australia for the best part of two years to see children and grandchildren, enduring endless frustration and rising costs – which has nothing to do with Djokovic, and yet everything, too. The original exemption for an unvaccinated Djokovic to play tennis felt like prioritising precisely the wrong person.

In short, it feels as though we all have so much emotion vested in issues of Covid and vaccines and behaviours that I am not sure any of us can come at the Djokovic story

with cold rationality – not even, it seems, the Australian authorities whose reasons for throwing him out seem to change every day, which has inflamed the story even more.

It strikes me that there are many reasons for regretting allowing Djokovic into the country in the first place but a fear that he will incite anti-vax sentiment, which was argued by the Australian government in yesterday’s appeal hearing , seems the most spurious concern of all.

More than 93 per cent of Victorians aged 12 and over have now had at least two doses of vaccine. They seem pretty sure in their feelings about Djokovic, especially having lived through extremely tough lockdowns and given continuing restrictions will have crowds capped at 50 per cent for the tournament.

A poll published by News Corp Australia showed that 84 per cent of more than 61,000 respondents believed that the government should try to deport him.

You can understand their antipathy after he made a false declaration on his immigration form, blaming it on his agent, and broke Covid-19 isolation rules in Serbia last month by attending a photoshoot after testing positive. ‘‘For him to do that photoshoot because he didn’t want to disappoint somebody – are you kidding me?’’ Martina Navratilova asked this week. It is hard to see why Djokovic is dangerous to the Australian public but he has acted like an entitled fool.

Is that reason enough to throw him out? Most of me sides with the local population, who feel that Djokovic has used up any little sympathy he may ever have had. Even if it is making an example of him for his public renown, he really does have only himself to blame.

But this story has veered into farce and pantomime, and one part of me would be spellbound by the theatre of Djokovic appearing in the tournament and seeing what crowd hell would be unleashed as he strived to win a record 21st grand-slam title.

Could anyone play decent tennis after all this? Perhaps only someone as bloodyminded as the Serb.

Part of me would be spellbound by the theatre of Djokovic appearing in the tournament.