India’s tennis legends Ramanathan Krishnan, Ramesh Krishnan, Anand Amritraj and Mahesh Bhupathi were honoured with the Davis Cup Commitment awards while India’s non-playing captain Shiv Prakash Misra and Leander Paes, playing in his 50th Davis Cup tie, were felicitated for their contributions.
The AITA’s Lifetime president Yashwant Sinha did the honours with Karnataka Home Minister R Ashoka also being present. The criteria for selection for the awards was a player should have competed in a minimum of 20 home or away Davis Cup ties. Speaking after the presentation, Anand Amritraj said that the current lot of players are good enough to take India into Davis Cup World Group next year but it requires special talent to be in top-100.
“Hopefully in 2014 we will have a good chance of making into the World Group,” he said. “It has always been easy for Indians to excel in doubles because they have good hands, anticipation and other stuff,” he added.
“Tennis has changed ever since I played the game in 1970s and 80s with athletes being bigger, stronger and faster now. We used to have 3 out of four Slams on grass. Now it is just one and rest are hard courts of varying speeds. It is now a completely a different game.”