THE previous player to land on these shores from Belgrade did not make any demands on the British tennis establishment, nothing like the presumptions that lie at the heart of the Djokovic family’s desire to move lock, stock and Novak from Serbia to opportunity galore here. Alex Bogdanovic, who was moved when he was 7 years old, is still finding his way, still something of an interloper.

When Bogdanovic demurred from playing Davis Cup against Serbia and Montenegro in April — he never refused to turn up, but his indecision was such that Jeremy Bates, the captain, preferred not to pick him — it was more that he was still hurting from what happened to him in Israel a year earlier, the tie in which Andy Murray announced his arrival to the world.

The British No 4 is happy to play next month at Eastbourne in an Israeli rerun, if selected. As yet there has been no indication of whether he is in the mix, but it is not as if, should Greg Rusedski’s hip continue to hurt, Bates is over-endowed with alternatives.

For Bogdanovic, at No 134 in the Indesit ATP rankings, equalling his career high, a wild card into Wimbledon next week is that rarity among British players, an achievement of merit rather than through a nod and a wink.

He will use it to the best of his abilities, then hope that those who condemned him for his performance 14 months ago in Tel Aviv may look more kindly on him. There was such a level of spite in the reaction of his fellow team members to Bogdanovic’s straight-sets loss in the second singles to Noam Okun, the player was visibly shaken and prefers to sidestep specific detail.

“I took a lot of stick and if, after the match, someone had given me a little bit more support, and said ‘OK, this has happened, but you’re the next guy in line, you’re going to be with us for a long time, it doesn’t really matter’, I’d have been fine,” he said. “I felt like I didn’t want to play again, the pressure on me was enormous. Definitely that was part of the reason for me to hesitate playing last month.”

Bogdanovic is proud of his recent progress and continues to hold out the hope that he will break into the world’s top 100, although he appreciates that there are 34 difficult steps to be taken. That he has spent the past three years working with Mike Raphael outside the supervision of the LTA, a maverick pair who complement each other but do not draw many compliments from the authorities, has served to highlight isolationist emotions.

There has never been any doubting Bogdanovic’s natural talents, the surprise was that he lacked the intensity of fellow Balkans, the kind that took Goran Ivanisevic to Wimbledon glory and can be witnessed in every move that Mario Ancic, Ivan Ljubicic, Janko Tipsarevic and the wannabe Briton, Novak Djokovic make.

“But I’m willing to do anything I can to be the best I can be,” Bogdanovic said. “A lot of people have said I’m physically and mentally weak, they’ve written me off and that did put me off a little bit before.”

So far in 2006, Bogdanovic has played nine challenger tournaments, winning the first two of the year. He lost in the first round of the Stella Artois Championships at Queen’s Club last week to Dmitry Tursunov, of Russia, though 7-6, 6-4 is in no sense a drubbing, and today he meets Max Mirnyi, of Belarus, in the Red Letter Days Open in Nottingham.

When it comes to wild-card causes, it may be argued that someone who did not want to play for his adopted country for the third time — his debut in the Davis Cup was in fiery combat against Lleyton Hewitt in Sydney in 2003 — should have been overlooked. Bogdanovic had taken nothing for granted, not with the rules being submitted, scrubbed out and reinvented on what seems to be a daily basis. Nor does he know if bygones will be bygones when the British team to play Israel is announced.

Unlike some Brits or would-be Brits, he’s never wanted the world.