Andy Murray: I almost missed my OBE ceremony

Thursday was an action-packed day for Andy Murray. Well, for starters, he was penned in to receive the OBE from Prince Williams at Buckingham Palace yesterday afternoon. For that, he simply needed to turn up at the mowed lawns of the Palace for the Empire to bestow upon him an honour reserved for the lofty achievers in British society.

If life only followed the spirit of letters. The man, who had broken the British-Wimbledon hoodoo after 77 long, painstaking years and had accomplished the insurmountable task of banishing Fred Perry’s tormented spirit from SW18, found the seemingly-lucid script tough to follow as the dreaded “taxman” (for all the sportspeople around the world, and no we aren’t singling out the Jamaican athletes for the fear of facing the brunt of the athletics chief) in the form of drug-inspectors decided to turn up at his place for a random test just ten minutes prior to his departure for the Palace.

A relieved Murray, after the investiture ceremony, revealed that he sweated over the thought of not reaching his appointment on time and credited the cab driver’s nous for saving his ‘royal’ blushes.

“I was just about to start getting ready and they turned up so I was a bit worried I was going to be late but the taxi driver did a good job getting around London,” Murray said.

Regarding his rehabilitation status, the Scot said he’d like to compete at next year’s Australian Open but laid a caveat, that of not playing if not fully fit. But he hoped to be “100 percent fit” before next year’s first grand slam.

Murray is currently recovering from a back surgery he underwent three weeks back.