Wimbledon: Sharapova v Venus Williams - Live!

Fool! David Mercer, sitting in the commentary box with Martina Navratilova, has just said said that we shouldn't be seeing rain any time soon. Following that comment I give it about 30 seconds.

Still speaking of A-Rod We really should pull this abbreviation trick with more players. Somehow A-Rod against PH-Mat has a slightly dirty ring to it...

It'll actually be a few minutes before this one kicks off But in the meantime Andy Roddick has just won his fourth round match against Paul-Henri Mathieu in three sets. And Novak Djokovic has finally seen off Nicolas Kiefer after four sets and four days of their third round match. Speaking of A-Rod, I've just had this video of him spectacularly failing on The Weakest Link shown to me. Has there ever been a worse performance by a sportsperson on a quiz show?

Just so you all know This match has actually started already - with all of three points getting played before yesterday's play was abandoned because o... I really don't need to tell you do I? Venus leads 30-15 on her first service game.

With all that in mind... I'll just be happy if today's match goes ahead, because the last two game-by-games I've tried to cover have both been repeatedly postponed by rain to the point where we ended up abandoning them altogether. As the only two women left yet to complete their fourth round matches, I suspect Venus and Maria feel the same.

Preamble: The queen is dead - long live the... eh.. well we haven't got a new one yet. Yes, last year's Wimbledon winner Amelie Mauresmo is out, as indeed is third seed Jelena Jankovic, leaving this year's championships only marginally more open than they were before. Much as there were at the outset, there are probably only a handful of women capable of winning this year's Wimbledon, and though Mauresmo and Jankovic probably fell into that category at the outset, on recent form Mauresmo was an outside bet compared to Justine Henin, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. I - like plenty of others - have been predicting that the winner of S Williams v Henin would win from the outset, but these two wouldn't have to play the winner of that match until the final, and we all know anything can happen over three sets.

In terms of this match Sharapova is the obvious choice - she's yet to drop a set here so far and despite not winning anything yet in 2007 has played pretty well all year. Venus has been on a good run so far this year too - jumping up from world no54 to the high 20s at one point and winning outright in Memphis, but she's dropped off a bit lately, slipping back to No31 and hasn't looked especially convincing here in SW19 - getting taken to three sets in her first round match against mediocre young Russian Alla Kudryavtseva and again in the third round by Japan's Akiko Morigami. Insert your own lame pun about refusing to fold here (every newspaper in the land already has).