CHENNAI: When Ajay Malik glanced at the team-sheet ahead of his first game at the recent National Championships, he must have been struck by a sense of deja vu.
The youngster, playing in the U-14 category, was up against the same player who had knocked him out in the first round, twelve months ago. Given where he was coming from, not many would have expected the result to be any different this time. But Ajay silently went about crafting an easy win. A few matches later, he was national champion.
The strands of hair sprouting under his nose are still too sparse to be called a moustache but Ajay already has a story that might be made into a film one day. The son of a retired armyman, Ajay practices on a make-shift mud court back home in the town of Gohana in Haryana.
“I made that court from whatever pension I got when I retired from the army,” Ajay’s father Ajmer Malik says. “We have tied the net around two old telephone poles. I had to spend around `3 lakh for this.”
Ajmer was a wrestler back in his day, but the story of how his son became a tennis player is a curious one. “When I was with the army, my superior officer gave me an old racquet that used to belong to his son,” Ajmer says. “I immediately took it home and Ajay, as well as his cousin Sombir, were fascinated by it. He was around eight years old then.”
But behind Ajay’s inspiring story is Sombir’s tragic one. The latter, eight years older than Ajay, decided he had to learn how to play tennis. “There was no coaching available, so I learnt whatever I could from TV,” Sombir says. “Roger Federer was my favourite, Ajay’s as well. I practised without warming up, using balls that were too hard. Soon I developed tennis elbow and had to stop playing.”
Still only 22, the self-taught Sombir is Ajay’s coach. “I sometimes accompany him to tournaments. But mostly, he goes alone.” In most tournaments, Sombir says, Ajay finds it tough in the first couple of games. “After training on a mud court, it is not easy to play on proper surfaces,” he says. “But then he adjusts.”
In between sets, when his opponents sip energy drinks, Ajay has to make do with water. And while he does not have access to sophisticated training regimens, he has a trainer who knows a thing or two about keeping fit — his father. “I learnt those exercises when I was a wrestler,” says Ajmer. “So that is what I make him do. So, even though Ajay is a tennis player, his training regime is that of a wrestler.”
vishnu.prasad@newindianexpress.com