I'm cheering for Čilić

And not just because of the nice alliteration. He was really impressive against Rublev yesterday, and I always do like to see people who've been written off as past their best make an impressive return to top form against younger opponents. On the other hand, now Čilić is up against Félix Auger-Aliassime, who I also like to cheer for on the grounds that he's young and cool, so it'll be very conflicting.

It's all about date of birth, of course - I've described before how fascinated I am by the continued dominance of tennis players born in the 1980s, to the total exclusion of the younger generation, and it's still continuing now. There's still that total gap with men born in the first half of the 1990s, but there are quite a few top players now born in 1996 and later, so the interestingly small number at the bottom of this chart might yet get rather more boring and relatively large.

But on the other hand, there are also good players born in the early 2000s coming through now - Auger-Aliassime and also Jannik Sinner in the last 16 of the Australian Open. I'm hoping, for the sake of having an interesting piece of trivia, that these 21st-century boys will entirely squeeze out the nineties gang in years to come!