Tennis

Murray number one after Raonic withdraws

Andy Murray has replaced Novak Djokovic as world number one after Milos Raonic withdrew from Saturday’s scheduled Paris Masters semi-final due to injury.

Murray would have taken over the top spot in the rankings for the first time in his career with a victory against the Canadian, but the Briton did not have to set foot on court in order to achieve that feat.

Djokovic’s quarter-final defeat to Marin Cilic on Friday gave Murray the opportunity to leapfrog him this week and the Serbian now drops to number two.

The dethroning of Djokovic comes after 122 consecutive weeks at the summit for the 12-time grand slam champion, who has failed to win a tournament since July and took a break after losing to Stan Wawrinka in the US Open final.

Djokovic has also had injury problems to contend with this year, while Murray has gone from strength to strength and will be a strong favourite to win his fourth title in a row against John Isner in the French capital on Sunday.

Murray is the second-oldest player to debut at number one at the age of 29 and the first British man to top the rankings.

The Wimbledon and Olympic champion has claimed seven titles in a stellar 2016.

Raonic, who will decide in the next few days whether he will be fit for the ATP World Tour Finals in London, revealed that he sustained a quad injury during his quarter-final win over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

The world number six said: “Yesterday at I believe 4-2 in the first set, I started feeling some pain in my leg. I didn’t think too much of it at that point.

“This morning I had trouble waking up and getting out of bed, so I went to sort of clear any serious diagnosis, did some tests, did an MRI half an hour ago and they found that I have a tear, a grade one tear in the right quad.”

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