91Èȱ¬

The report from the investigating the spending of the failed to deliver the knockout blow that some were hoping for, but it contains enough intrigue to suggest the inquest is far from over.

The group chaired by was asked by the Sports Minister to interview the LTA management, and various independent critics to establish whether tax payers' money is being used wisely.

In addition to the annual millions, the LTA receives money from the National Lottery via Sport England and is currently one year into a four-year contract worth £26m.

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was no surprise .

It wasn't necessarily his fault - and he held the respect of the players, some of whom went out of their way to fight his corner - but it was his team.

He was the captain of a wealthy British side which lost to a team of kids from the tennis non-league. He had to go.

But if the chiefs think that will be the end of the matter, scapegoat identified and slaughtered, they should be mistaken.

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Like a dazed party of stags, coming round the morning after the night before, the high command bravely fronted up today here in Vilnius.

The wreckage was not of broken bottles or body parts, the stench not of alcohol poisoning, but British tennis had effectively been stripped bare, roped to a tree and beaten with branches.

. At least the bosses admitted so. "It's like being in a very bad dream," LTA chief executive Roger Draper told 91Èȱ¬ Sport. "Along with lots of other British tennis fans [we are] sharing the humiliation of losing to Lithuania."

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The expression is overused in sport, sometimes to prepare us for a fall, sometimes to disguise poor preparation.

Here in snowbound , the arrived via a budget airline and a rickety yellow bus for their match with Lithuania.

This may be the tennis wilderness but it is not "the unknown". There should be few surprises this weekend and, therefore, there can be no excuses.

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Balancing the importance of history with the demands of the future - tradition with progress - is one of the great challenges in tennis. The sport may have moved with the times with big changes to racquets, surfaces and scoring systems, but essentially the game remains true to tradition.

dates back to 1877 (remarkably soon after the invention of the sport, when you think about it) and the began in 1881. A began in 1891, allowing international competitors from 1925, while the started in 1905.

The venues have changed (from Worpole Road, Forest Hills, Stade Francais and Kooyong), even the cities have changed - the US event began in Newport, Rhode Island, and the Aussie Open moved from Adelaide to Brisbane before settling in Melbourne - yet the countries have remained constant.

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