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India win easy, but questions over discipline remain
CHANDIGARH: Rohan Bopanna replaced Saketh Myneni in the first reverse singles on Sunday. Myneni had not recovered fully from his draining match on Friday which had
CHANDIGARH: Rohan Bopanna replaced Saketh Myneni in the first reverse singles on Sunday. Myneni had not recovered fully from his draining match on Friday which had seen both players succumbing to severe cramping. Both the Korean players who had cramped on Friday had recovered.
Bopanna won 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 against South Korea’s Hong Chung in an inconsequential match with the tie already sealed in India’s favour.
On the face of it, Bopanna does not even have a singles ranking while his Korean opponent Hong Chung is 665 in the world. But given his huge serve and given that grass is his favourite surface, it was not imprudent to expect the world number 14 doubles player to prevail. Doubles, after all, is largely serve and volley. And grass, after all, is all about serve and volley.
But as the match wore on and he conceded two breaks in the very first set, it appeared that Bopanna was largely going through the motions.
BIG V SMALL
It was actually quite the small guy against the big guy contest. At 5’7” and 23 years, Chung has far less court coverage and experience than his 6’3”, 36-year-old opponent.
Down 1-4 in the second, the man from Bangalore did dig in his heels and came back to level the set. By then, Bopanna seemed to have shaken off the cobwebs and kept more balls in to wear down the nerves of the younger man across the net. Crucially, he stopped committing as many errors on serve. He came back to take the set 6-4 and then proceeded to pocket the next one also 6-4.
Bopanna had only learnt early this morning that he would be playing instead of Saketh. Later, after a short rain delay, Yong-Kyu Lim refused to allow Ramkumar Ramanathan to close out the second reverse singles and won 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (2). India won the tie 4-1.
GET DISCIPLINE RIGHT
The last time a doubles specialist was forced to play the reverse singles was way back in April 2008. Leander Paes was the captain of the team and the other members — Mahesh Bhupathi, Rohan Bopanna and Prakash Amritraj — were not his best friends. With the tie against Japan sealed 3-0 by Saturday, the three friends decided to have a night out and then the singles players chose to skip the reverse singles on Sunday. Paes and Bhupathi were forced to play the redundant singles. The bill for that night’s revelry was submitted to tennis federation president Anil Khanna.
On Saturday night, the team went out for dinner and drinks in Chandigarh too. Having a drink after a hard fought victory needn’t necessarily classify as a breach of a player’s code of conduct while playing for his country, but one does wonder if it is necessary when some matches are still left over. Similarly, on the face of it, a player entertaining a girlfriend in the dressing room while his team mates struggle out on court may also be considered no big deal (the said incident took place in Bangalore, September 2014) but then just where does one draw the line? Much of this would have been anathema to teams of an earlier era.
Present captain Anand Amritraj is a colourful guy and got his job as the players wanted him over the old-school SP Misra. But the way some of the discipline has been wavering, one does wonder if Amritraj really needs to put the friend bit on the back-burner and implement some basic old-fashioned rules.
