Revealed: The secrets of the Wimbledon ball boys and girls

The long-suffering Wimbledon ball boys and girls are often in the line of fire. But whether they're on the receiving end of a player rant, or getting struck by a wayward ball, the young helpers maintain an air of diligence, discipline and attention to detail.

Now we know how they do it. Their head trainer has revealed that they keep a "secret dossier" of player demands and habits, ranging from the routine to the bizarre.

Sarah Goldson, who also works as a PE teacher, said of the dossier: "We do have a list of who does what on court, but sometimes those things change and we expect the BBGs to adapt to that."

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It reveals that some of the biggest names in the game harbour unusual superstitions and habits, including Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic and - particularly - Rafael Nadal.

The two-time winner, who crashed out of this year's tournament in an epic five-set encounter with Gilles Muller, is famed for his on-court routines, including lining up drinks bottles in a certain way and instructing people not to touch them.

Furthermore, says the Daily Telegraph, Nadal "never walks on the lines" on the court, so the ball boys and girls "have to be careful not to force him onto them by blocking his path".

Andy Murray apparently demands that a towel be given to him after every point, while Novak Djokovic reportedly reaches his arm behind him - without looking at the ball boy or girl - to ask for a towel.

Such is the growth of the list of demands from individual players in recent years that the ball boys and girls are struggling to keep up, and their training needs to be adapted.

"We could build that into the training programme, where we just throw something in that's slightly random, because we've seen a few more different things this year," Goldson said.

Three-time semi-finalist Roger Taylor was critical of the idiosyncracies of modern players, highlighting Nadal's decision to hand a piece of litter to a ball boy to put in a bin that was right next to the Spanish player earlier this week.

"We never did that," said Taylor. "We never took towels to the baseline. It's how it's developed."