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It is not often that the game of cricket gets secondary treatment in India. The presence of Sachin Tendulkar & Virat Kohli at Wimbledon as spectators got more coverage than the actual performance of Indian tennis players there.
So, when 3/4th of prime time sports news passes by and there is no mention of the gentleman’s game (as cricket is fondly called) or girl friends of Indian cricketers in spite of the fact that Indian cricket team is playing an ODI series (even though it is against lowly ranked Zimbabwe); one can be sure that something special has happened.
The reason for this step-motherly treatment to cricket is that it is the first Monday after Wimbledon and for a change, Indians have excelled at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club.
Indian summer at Wimbledon
Well, if the news is about Wimbledon then one would expect that the talk would revolve around the gentlemen’s winner Novak Djokovic or the ladies winner Serena Williams. But here we were 20 minutes into the show and Wimbledon was discussed without the mention of Djokovic or runner-up Roger Federer. The news anchor dubbed it as the “Indian summer at Wimbledon”.
As the tag-line of Rolex (the official time keeper at Wimbledon) says - “It does not just tell time, it tells history”; for Indian tennis it indeed was creation of history. For the first time in the history of Indian tennis, three Indians won the Wimbledon title in different categories. Over the last weekend at Wimbledon, Leander Paes, Sania Mirza and Sumit Nagal won the title in mixed-doubles, ladies’ doubles and boys’ doubles respectively.
At one end of the spectrum is 42-year-old Paes and at the other end is 17-year-old Nagal with the 28- year-old Mirza somewhere in the middle. Come to think of it that Nagal was not even born when Paes had won the bronze medal at Atlanta olympics in 1996.
Future of Indian tennis looks bright
With 16 Grand Slam titles to his name, Paes has ensured a special place for himself not only in the history of Indian tennis but also in the history of doubles tennis. It is testimony to his talent that in a category where coordination is the key, he has played with 100 different partners with remarkable success. At the age of 42, he is still going strong and has a desire to represent India in next years’ Rio Olympics.
Mirza too has made a good comeback after injury & loss of form and then there is the teenage sensation Nagal who as per 12 time Grand Slam winner Mahesh Bhupathi is the next big thing in Indian tennis. So, the future of Indian tennis looks bright.
We as a nation have starved for years’ for success in tennis and we now have a hat-trick of victories in the most prestigious tennis tournament.
So, in truly Indian style (since it is the Indian summer at Wimbledon) let us get ourselves a bowl of Gulabjamuns & Laddoos and as we would say “Kuch meetha ho jaaye” (let us have some sweets).
