AS I write this, at the start of the second week of Wimbledon, arguably the best and worst moments of the world’s greatest tennis tournament have had nothing to do with tennis.

Perhaps the worst moment came when Venus Williams was questioned in her post-match interview about the head-on collision between her car and another, whose front-seat passenger died. Visibly upset, the six-times Wimbledon champion struggled to reply. Not only did the camera linger too long, but the accident never should have been raised in the first place.

Post-match interviews should focus on tennis. Of course some non-controversial non-tennis subjects – say a forthcoming marriage or birth – might be introduced. But nothing smacking of legal process should be there. Nevertheless I am happy to repeat here reports from last weekend that CCTV footage released by the police shows Venus Williams correctly entering the junction where the fatal collision occurred.

But was that interview Wimbledon’s worst Week One moment? If so, the runner up would be the agonising collapse of Bethanie Mattek-Sands with a grotesquely dislocated knee. That sickening “moment” lasted the 20 minutes it took to remove her safely from the court.

But the crisis produced what might be Wimbledon’s best moment. Seeing Mattek-Sands collapse, her opponent, Romanian Soran Cirstea, immediately stepped over the net and went to her aid. It was she who called for a stretcher. “No one was having any reaction,” she said. “It was heartbreaking.”

Cirstea’s instinct to help a fellow human being shone all the more brightly in a Wimbledon week most notable, I would say, for examples of bad behaviour, on and off the courts.

Off court, there was a male spectator who wrestled a Wimbledon towel from the hands of a boy to whom the player Jack Sock had deliberately thrown it. On court, instances of poor sportsmanship brought record levels of fines, including £11,500 for a player who confessed to faking an injury, and £7,000 on another who barged aside a ballboy. In his tight match with Andy Murray, the Italian Fabio Fognini followed up a racket smashing moment with an obscene gesture, for which he was docked a point.

But it is not only tennis that is infected with declining sportsmanship. South Africa’s leading bowler, Kagiso Rabada, has been banned from the Second Test at Trent Bridge this week after giving England’s Ben Stokes a foul-mouthed send-off during the Lord’s Test. It matters not that Stokes himself is a master of the aggressive send-off, which demeans both the player and the game.

It was in response to worsening behaviour that the MCC introduced its annual Spirit of Cricket Lecture back in 2001. The irony is that when the spirit of cricket was in good shape there was no need for a lecture. It could take its cue from some words by a legendary Australian cricketer, all-rounder MA “Monty” Noble (1873-1940): “Nothing I know touches the finer feelings of humanity more than the unobtrusive demonstration of true sportsmanship… Cricket teaches us never to use our mental or physical powers in an unworthy way.”

Spirit of Cricket lecturers would find it embarrassing to say that. Let’s salute Sorana Cristea, who has indeed touched – and demonstrated – “the finer feelings of humanity”. She is my Wimbledon champion of 2017.