Emma Raducanu needs a new coach and Andy Murray is the answer

Scot is better qualified than anybody when it comes to plotting a long-term campaign and could function as a point of reassurance

If it takes a village to raise a child, then the modern tennis tour increasingly requires a significant entourage.

World-beating names like Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz tend to have both a primary and a secondary coach – because few of the top operators want to spend all year away from home – with extra physios and fitness trainers thrown in.

In the case of Emma Raducanu, however, hiring staff has always been a tricky proposition. Tennis insiders have long felt that she needed a full-time fitness trainer with her on the road. And now that she has finally employed one – the highly regarded Yutaka Nakamura – she suddenly finds herself without a coach again.

In an era when coaching from the stands is permitted on the WTA Tour, this puts Raducanu at a significant disadvantage, and indeed she has lost both her first-round matches since Nick Cavaday stepped down. For context, Cavaday has a chronic health condition which is incompatible with her determination to play a full calendar of events this season.

Raducanu was accompanied in Abu Dhabi – where she suffered a straight-sets defeat by former Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova on Tuesday – by Nakamura and Roman Kelecic, a locally based coach who took her to junior events when she was in her mid-teens.