Jannik Sinner inflicts Novak Djokokovic's fastest EVER Wimbledon defeat in one-sided semi-final - to set up mouthwatering showdown with Carlos Alcaraz

Stefan Djokovic sat with head bowed, his glum expression only partially obscured by the peak of a cap which is decorated by the signatures of the men who have ended his father’s reign.

There is the scrawl of Carlos Alcaraz, the man who destroyed his dad in last year’s Wimbledon final. And there is the mark of Jannik Sinner, the man who on Friday inflicted Novak Djokovic’s worst and fastest ever defeat at Wimbledon.

Never has the seven-time champion won fewer than the 10 games he managed here; never has a defeat in a completed match been as rapid as this one hour and 55 minute dissection.

In witnessing this 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 defeat, in which Djokovic looked increasingly troubled by the awkward slip that came at the end of his previous match, perhaps 11-year-old Stefan felt a measure of embarrassment in seeing his father so humbled. But when he grows a little older he will look back on this day with pride. He will realise how heroic are this 38-year-old champion’s efforts to keep pace with two luminous talents.

Buried in the brutality of this scoreline was a surge from Djokovic in the third set. As his body slowed - how much from a slip in his quarter-final win over Flavio Cobolli, how much from the strain of age only he knows - he launched a net-rushing counter-attack that briefly threatened to make a match of this.

Djokovic broke for 2-0 and gave his first ‘C’mon’. He held for 3-0 and then ripped a forehand winner down the line, sending a shiver through 15,000 spines. ‘Nole, Nole, Nole,’ the chant throbbed around a sweltering Centre Court.

Djokovic has enjoyed precious little support on this court over the last 20 years. He interrupted the Federer-Nadal love-in and the fans did not like it. In the three finals in which he defeated Roger Federer, some of the barracking of the crowd was beyond the pale.

How different it was now as his career comes full circle with an attempt to break the next great duopoly. It is an attempt in which he is failing, but he has never had such support from a Wimbledon crowd.

You may know the famous quote from Batman film the Dark Knight: ‘You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.’ Djokovic has reversed that: in refusing to retire as a villain, he has played on long enough to see himself become the hero.

In hindsight, the death knell for Djokovic’s latest campaign for a 25th Grand Slam title came with the rending of Grigor Dimitrov’s pectoral muscle. In the fourth round the Bulgarian was leading Sinner, who had suffered an elbow injury, by two sets to love and playing like a dream. Then he fell to the court with a scream of pain and Djokovic, were he watching, would have been screaming inside as well.

For as soon as Sinner received that enormous stroke of luck, Djokovic was on a collision course with the man who he simply cannot beat.

It feels appropriate that Sinner’s Head Speed racket is from the same range as Djokovic’s - just a more recent version. For he is the next stage of the evolution. He plays with the same relentless baseline precision, returns with the same venom. But his serve is faster, his groundstrokes come through harder and with more spin, and land closer to the lines. He is faster and moves better.

Djokovic has now lost to Sinner five times in a row, the previous three in straight sets. He is like the victim of a capricious and cruel Greek god, doomed to face a mirror image of himself, a being which gets better as he himself grows older.

The fact he inflicts this punishment upon himself is testimony to his insatiable appetite for competition.

And so Sinner is into a first Wimbledon final. We have a sequel to the extraordinary five and a half hour French Open final, Alcaraz’s miracle in Paris. For the first time since Federer and Nadal in 2008, the finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon will be contested by the same two men.

It is a mouthwatering prospect.