With only 11 days to go before the start of Andy Murray’s planned comeback tournament in Brisbane, concerns are growing that he is behind schedule in his preparation, because of lingering problems with his damaged right hip.

Murray has not broken down physically, and is understood to be continuing his training schedule with Jamie Delgado, his coach, at the All England Club’s facilities in Wimbledon and Raynes Park.

However, it is a surprise – and a worrying one, for British tennis fans – that he is in the UK at all.

The original intention had been for Murray and his family to travel to Australia before Christmas, to give him the fullest possible preparation for the tournament.

As he put it at his exhibition event in Glasgow six weeks ago: “My plan is to do a couple of weeks in Miami and then go to Australia very early, much earlier than I have done in the past.”

But when you consider that it takes the best part of 24 hours to travel to Australia, Murray is no longer in a position to establish a base camp for a lengthy period of acclimatisation. Increasingly, it feels as if he is in a race against time to get there at all.