During an India-Serbia World Group Playoff Davis Cup tie in 2014, one journalist wondered why Indian tennis’ various stakeholders continued to use big events (Olympics, Davis matches et. al.) as a sort of sideshow to have a go at each other. When the scribe asked this question to a leading All India Tennis Association (AITA) official at a press conference, the official demurred. Minutes after this official presser ended, a smaller, impromptu one began with another official. In this presser, there was more dirty linen than in an overworked house-keeping section of a five-star hotel. It’s a different decade. The actors have changed. The players in 2014 are no longer there. The make-up of the AITA is different. But as ever in Indian tennis, the negative news stories keep piling up in and around Davis week.
If word on the street is anything to go by, a top Indian businessman from a familiar State -- no, not either of them -- will run to take control of AITA at the upcoming election next week. If all goes well, the tennis enthusiast won’t shy away from reshaping AITA in his own image. “You may hear some good news,” was how one person put it to this daily earlier this week. It may just be the ‘cultural shift’ Rohan Bopanna had wanted when he posted about the sport’s current Indian condition. Indian tennis needs one. You remember that meme? The one with ‘call the ambulance, but not for me’. With Indian tennis, right now it’s ‘call the mortuary because I’m about to die’.
If any sport in the country can do with some much-needed oxygen to get the blood flow going again, it’s tennis. A lot of people — players, administrators, journalists covering the sport and coaches — have vented their frustration about its insane ability to keep pressing the self destruct button. Actually, at some level, even that is wrong. Self destruction, by its very nature, suggests there’s some foundation, some promise. Hope. Here, there’s nothing. Not even a facade.
The latest round of bad news stories had come before, during and immediately after Sweden’s comfortable 4-0 win over India in a Davis Cup fixture last week. As many as three players didn’t make themselves available. One doubles specialist was made to play a live singles rubber, while an 18-year-old looked on from the bench.
The only surprising thing about the Indian contingent’s two days in the Nordic country was they fulfilled the obligations in the first place. “Look on the bright side, this is probably rock bottom,” was how somebody put it to this daily when it was put to them that the sport couldn’t go any lower.
Another person, someone who has worked with both the players and officials for more than a decade, said the sport needed a total shock to recover. “Hats off to Sriram Balaji for fronting up and playing the singles rubber because he could easily have said no when the captain (Rohit Rajpal) asked him to get ready.”
Rajpal’s decision to ask Balaji to play a live singles rubber is, in its own way, a representation of where the game is at right now. The 34-year-old not only doesn’t have a singles ranking but has never featured in a tour-level singles match if you discount Davis play. Why was Balaji asked to play when Aryan Shah, ranked 640th in the world, was with the squad? No answers were forthcoming. It’s no guarantee that Shah would have won that match but at this level, the experience of playing live rubbers count. Shah may not even be the answer for India’s future in the sport but a 34-year-old doubles specialist is most certainly not that.
A coach who continues to live and breathe the sport was scared to put his name to the piece because ‘if I put my name to this story, there’s no guarantee that my mental peace won’t be shattered’. “Rohit is a fine man, I have spoken with him a lot of times,” the coach says. “But when you see him on the bench, you have to ask yourself if he can perhaps do more to inspire these players?” Attempts to reach the current non-playing captain went in vain.
While Rajpal has emerged as a soft target because he’s the public face of AITA — as captain, he plays a prominent role — he has found support. “What Rajpal has done is he has united this team,” says an official who has travelled with the contingent a lot of times in the past. “In the earlier days during Davis matches, players would come down for breakfast and wonder whether they would have to sit in the ‘Leander (Paes) table’ or in the ‘Mahesh (Bhupathi) table’. Rajpal has certainly finished that sort of groupism.” That’s one way to look at it. A more sobering way to look at is that players these days don’t even want to play Davis Cup ties.
It kind of segues to some of the charges made against the likes of Nagal and Sasikumar Mukund (if they had made themselves available, it’s likely they would have featured in the singles rubbers).
Now, some facts. The players are free to turn down Davis Cup opportunities. Players from a fair few countries, including top-10 players from around the world, have done this since time immemorial and have carried on. Players are also entitled (and also get) to some compensation for featuring in the Davis Cup. For the Sweden tie, it’s understood that AITA got a fee in excess of $50000, some of which was redistributed among the players.
Over the last few days, Nagal, India’s only top-100 singles player across genders, has taken some stick for demanding an annual retainer to play in the ‘World Cup of Tennis’. The only reason why this is in the public domain is because the AITA wanted this to be. What should really have been private conversation is in the public sphere. “Regarding compensation, I want to clarify that it is a standard practice in professional sports for athletes to be compensated for their participation in events, even when representing the country,” Nagal said in a statement. “This is not about personal gain. My discussions with AITA and the Davis Cup Captain are confidential and I would not like to indulge in any speculation about this.”
Nagal is entitled to demand a yearly fee to feature in the Davis Cup but similarly, the AITA is entitled to think it would serve them better if Nagal didn’t go on a podcast just after the Davis Cup to air his ire about the current state of affairs with Somdev Devvarman and Purav Raja.
One current AITA official told this daily that ‘you people (media) will keep favouring the players but ultimately the federation itself is for the players’. “You may get good news soon.”
The ironical thing in all of this is that India has showed that when multiple minds get together for a project, it can bring about positive change. The Indian tennis fraternity had made its peace with an absence of singles players but there was a certain pride of place in its ability to keep churning Majors-winning doubles players.
However, that tap too had threatened to dry in first weeks of 2022 where there was only one player, Rohan Bopanna, inside the top-100 and only five more inside the top-200. Something had to be done. Months later, the Pune Metropolitan District Tennis Association (with help from Bopanna) came up with the Doubles Dream of India. The project funded some of the leading doubles players, gave them accessibility to coaches and so on. Bopanna also got in touch with Jeff Coetzee for an off-season training camp in Dubai with some of the players in late 2022. Less than two years later, there are four Indians in the top-100 and six more in the top-200.
But if there has been a turnaround of fortunes in the doubles, there's no such story in singles. If anything, it has become bleaker. "When Nagal said he had less than a lakh in his bank account, it may have well worked out for him but it kind of didn't help India," says one coach. "There were a fair few parents concerned. They kept asking 'if this is the plight of India's No. 1 singles player, what about our sons? The end result is that a fair few promising players have already packed their bags for the US to do the whole collegiate system."
There's a new threat to tennis' hegemony as the principal racquet outdoor sport. Pickleball/padel. At Wimbledon, Novak Djokovic had said: "Now we have the padel or pickleball. People kind of have fun with it and say, 'yeah, but tennis is tennis'. Tennis is the king or queen of all the racquet sports, that's true. But on a club level, tennis ins endangered. If we don't do something about it, as I said... they are going to convert all the tennis clubs into padel and pickleball because it's just more economical."
The Indian tennis fraternity don't have any such worries. Because, in India, the danger to tennis lies within and not outside the ecosystem.