CHENNAI: It’s really difficult to tell these brothers apart. Add identical clothing to the equation and about a 50 feet distance between the seats and centre court at the SDAT stadium, and it’s downright impossible. But many probably wouldn’t recognise this dynamite doubles pair on court at all, if not for a twist of fate recently.
An injury had one of the players drop out, leaving an empty slot open for opponents against Mahesh Bhupathi and Saketh Myneni. And as luck would have had it the Sood twins were in the running to take their place. Suddenly, these brothers who have been coming to the Chennai Open every year and going back home after the qualifiers were shot right up to a battle against one of the formidable teams of the tourney. So what’s the first thing you do when you get news that big?
“We shopped!” says Chandril, the younger of the two by a minute. “We decided if we were going to be going up against one half of our dream team (Bhupathi) we needed to look good,” says Lakshit.
The brothers, who will turn 24 next month do everything together... practise, travel, shop, cook and of late have been taking more selfies than ever before with their fast growing female fanbase.
Coming to Chennai every year to play, the brothers from Delhi tell us that they are quite familiar with our streets. “When we are not playing, we’re usually headed to buy movie tickets here, because compared to Delhi, tickets are so cheap here!” says a Chandril. If you didn’t know they were tennis players, they would pass for regular 20-something youngsters hanging out in a mall by the Adidas section.
And oddly enough, when asked what sets them apart, they can’t think of one thing! In fact, the two are so inseparable that Chandril reveals, “Even when one of us is training out of the country, like Lakshit was in Italy a while ago, we spoke every day on Skype for 30 Euros minimum.”
We don’t need them to hit a ball over the net to give them ‘30 love’ right there.