Barnes's Law of Wimbledon is now to be put to its most extreme test. It states that every player whom Wimbledon greatly hates ends up still more greatly loved. It is a law that has held true for champion after champion and through age after age. But now the Williams sisters have fought out another women's singles final together to a background of polite indifference and they must ask themselves: what must we do before Wimbledon loves us?

The ultimate proof of Barnes's Law is still to be found on Centre Court, lurking behind a glass window and charming millions with his wit, his sense of irony, his acuteness and his cuteness. His name is John McEnroe and he is perhaps the most loved person in tennis - an interesting change from being the most hated.

He was renowned for his on-court tantrums, his surliness, his dreadful air of believing that the world owed him far more than it was prepared to give. But, long before he retired as a player, he was loved, as someone who had enriched our past, played fabulous tennis and, above all, had not mellowed in the slightest. The reality that he was still so wholly himself inspired the affection that was at first withheld.

Wimbledon hate-objects have only to stay themselves for a sufficient length of time before their character traits start to arouse love instead of hate. Wimbledon hated Jimmy Connors because he simply never stopped looking for a fight; eventually Wimbledon loved him for the same reason.

Multimedia

• Was this the greatest Wimbledon final ever?

• Rafa's blog: thank you and goodbye

• Relive the drama of the final

Nadal shows superhuman spirit

Tennis of such high quality has never been played so long and so late even on the most hallowed of courts, writes Barry Flatman

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• Spanish media hail new Wimbledon champion as "King Rafael Nadal"

• Relentless Rafael Nadal stays strong for 'dream title'

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• Venus proves she is at home amongst the greats

Hard to recall, I know, but Wimbledon for a time hated Steffi Graf. When she was young she seemed to be a faceless machine, just another outcrop of German efficiency, heartless and utterly unappealing.

She hid her shyness behind a sheepdog haircut, completed a grand slam (the last person to do so) at 19 and seemed to have no redeeming qualities. Then she tied her hair back, came to terms with her achievements, became beautiful overnight and people from the crowd proposed marriage to her on Centre Court.

Billie Jean King was hated as a brash American, eventually loved as a champion and a pioneer. But the most extreme case was Martina Navratilova, initially hated as an Iron Curtain interloper, then as an altogether too perfect athlete, too brilliant, too fit, too strong. She came out as a lesbian - that didn't help. Then, slowly, gradually, she became loved.

She won nine Wimbledon singles titles and the respect changed from grudging to heartfelt. But it was not only the string of victories; there was something else. Venus and Serena would be interested to know what turned the corner for her and made her one of the great Centre Court favourites of all time. The answer, girls, is vulnerability.

It became clear that Navratilova's inexorable brilliance was allied to a fragile and volatile temperament. These sudden vistas of her fallibility touched the hearts of the Wimbledon crowd. And as it became clear that she was fighting against three opponents at once - the one at the other side of the net, her own intense nature, and Time itself - no one could resist her.

So here's what to do, girls: lose a few matches in fraught circumstances, then make a glorious and improbable comeback. And above all, change nothing in your essential nature. The day that Wimbledon loves you will surely dawn.

Rafael Nadal comments brought to book

Andy Murray's first great oeuvre, Hitting Back, is available from all good bookshops, and no doubt some crappy ones as well. I found a copy on a colleague's desk; the press release was interesting. “This is a goddamn wonderful book,” it said. No, it didn't, silly me. That was Hemingway on Ulysses. It actually said: “The toughest guy I've ever played against,” attributing the line, a trifle unexpectedly, to Rafael Nadal. He must have said it a long time ago. Or perhaps it was literary judgment.

Young champion passes the sound check

The fuss surrounding Laura Robson's victory in the girls' singles asks one of the perennial questions of sport: when is a Brit not a Brit? Robson was born in Australia and came here at 6. In a press-box discussion, a colleague suggested that she is British because she passes the ultimate test: she sounds like one of us. That is something that Greg Rusedski never managed. Decent chap with a hell of a serve, but he never sounded (or for some reason, looked) like anything else than a strapping lad from Montreal with a slightly unnerving smile.

Meanwhile, the star of the England cricket team is Kevin Pietersen, a fascinating player of extraordinary talent. No one who saw his innings against Australia at the Brit Oval in 2005 - the one that won the Ashes - could feel indifferent to him. But listen to him speak: “Ja, man, what's 'ipp'nin'?” Every time he opens his mouth he reminds us that he is at base a bloke from Pietermaritzburg who doesn't half fancy himself. He also reminds us that his genius is restricted to cricket.

Oh, and my views on Robson? Will she win the women's singles one day? It's a silly question. We don't know. Nobody knows. That's the whole point; certainly the whole point of sport and probably the whole point of life as well. Trying to turn a 14-year-old into a champion by sheer wishful thinking is pure folly.

Incidentally, if the sounds-like-us test is to stand up to more exacting scrutiny, what about Virginia Wade? To this day, she scatters a few South African vowels in her conversation.

Let the suffering begin

I knew there was something missing from the past two Test series involving England. Now I remember what it was: pace. We have had two series against New Zealand and there has been a distinct lack of terror. Cricket without terror is like Mexican food without chillies. However, we have a series against South Africa beginning on Thursday at Lord's: Makhaya Ntini, Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn all send it down at 90mph and faster.

That's the stuff. I'm not asking for blood and broken bones, just terror. A batsman should have every aspect of his nature challenged, and that includes his physical courage. No fast bowler in the history of cricket has sought only to test the reflexes and hand-eye co-ordination of the man at the other end.

Americans will always tell you that cricket's a cissy game and that baseball is a game for real men, with its collisions and its shouting and its hissing fastballs. But you can win the argument by asking what happens when a batter gets hit. In baseball, he drops his bat and takes an aggrieved walk to first base, as is his right. He is considered within his moral rights to run at the pitcher with fists flying. But in cricket, a batsman who is struck has two choices: to pack it in and go home, or bloody well get on with it, to get back into line and, whatever else he does, not back away.

We need to see athletes suffer. It is an essential part of their job. Nobody wishes physical injury on an athlete, but everyone relishes the sight of mental strife. Without suffering, there is no sport; without anguish, nobody would bother to watch.