Almanack: Postscript

A FINAL religious - or rather sacrilegious - note. Before Jeremy Bates beat Boris Becker in the Stella Artois tournament, the bookmakers William Hill reckoned that the odds on an English Wimbledon triumph were the same as the odds on the second coming: 1,000-1. After Bates had won, they revised their opinion. The odds are now the same as those on offer about the next Pope being a woman: 500-1. Bates saved the bookies from any further liturgical research by crashing out of the tournament on Friday.