Cricket
was a gentlemen's game. We turned it into a game of fixers and
philanderers. Tennis was a game of excellence where individuals
displayed the strength of their character and the charm of their
civilisation. We are turning it into an ego theatre, incompetent
officials providing the props. We seem to have a special talent to
turn anything we touch into dirt.
Cricket
may have gone beyond redemption. The money has become so big that the
politicians will never let go of it. Which means the game can never
rise above the sordid coalition dharma of Sharad Pawar, Arun Jaitley
and Rajiv Shukla, the brooding spirit of Lalit Modi looming behind
them. Badminton is in the clutches of administrative pharisees who
threw out the likes of Prakash Padukone; it is saved from ruin only
by the gutsiness of a Jwala Gutta and the innocence of a Saina
Nehwal. Athletics is in the doldrums, officials often outnumbering
athletes on tours and cornering all the goodies. In all sports
arenas, politicians prosper, players don't.
Tennis
has a noble pedigree which makes its fall from grace particularly
sad. Ramanathan Krishnan, Premjit Lal, Jaideep Mukherjee and Vijay
Amritraj were gentlemen's gentlemen – on court and off it.
Amritraj, a master of public relations, was known as “Mr Nice Guy”.
In fact every one of them was Mr Nice Guy, never succumbing to John
McEnroe kind of tantrums or Serena Williams type dramatics. They did
not win the grandslams, but they won admiration for their
sportsmanship.
Leander
Paes won many crowns, but hardly the respect of his team mates. In
2008 four Davis Cup players refused to carry on if Paes remained the
captain. Their main complaint was that he played to get all the
credit for himself and did not show the team spirit expected of a
captain. Rohan Bopanna was one of the four. Another, Prakash
Amritraj, said of Paes: “This man has taken the joy away from
playing the Davis Cup”. Has he also taken the joy out of playing in
the Olympics? Following Mahesh Bhupathi's refusal to partner Paes in
London, the Tennis Association tried to move Vishnu Vardhan as Paes'
partner. Paes was initially contemptuous of the idea because Vardhan
was ranked 206. When Paes was a low-ranked junior, the reigning
Ramesh Krishnan had welcomed him as a partner and encouraged him.
The culture has changed.
Not
that Mahesh Bhupathi is a saint in saint's robes. He and Leander Paes
made the best doubles team in the history of Indian tennis, but
never were two sportsmen more unsportsmanlike in their attitude to
each other – not even Harbhajan Singh and Sreeshanth. And never did
any other sportsmen have such dominating fathers controlling things.
Harbhajan's father didn't appear on television to explain why his son
slapped Sreeshanth. Nor did Sreeshanth's father issue a statement
explaining why his son cried.
But
we have Paes senior demanding that Sania Mirza give a written
undertaking to partner Leander in mixed doubles at the Olympics if
Leander is to partner the lower-ranked Vishnu Vardhan in the men's
doubles. In this low-ranked display of oneupmanship, the most
graceful performance was Sania Mirza's. She had the dignity to say
that, although she preferred Mahesh Bhupathi, she was ready to
partner Leander Paes in the larger interests of the country.
She
said more. She said it all in a wisely worded and beautifully crafted
statement. She recalled her winning a silver for India in the 2010
Asian Games in partnership with Vishnu Vardhan. She told Leander
that Vishnu would go one better if he were teamed up with someone as
good as Leander. And she said: “What I find disillusioning is the
humiliating manner in which I was put up as a bait to try and pacify
one of the disgruntled stalwarts of Indian tennis … This kind of
blatant humiliation of Indian womanhood needs to be condemned even if
it comes from the highest controlling body of tennis in our country”.
Bravo,
Sania.