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‘Legacies, halcyon days andthereafter’: A brief historyof Indian tennisSuvam PalPublished online: 01 Jul 2009.

To cite this article: Suvam Pal (2004) ‘Legacies, halcyon days and thereafter’: Abrief history of Indian tennis, The International Journal of the History of Sport,21:3-4, 452-466, DOI: 10.1080/09523360409510550

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'Legacies, Halcyon Days and Thereafter':A Brief History of Indian Tennis

SUVAM PAL

In this cricket-crazy country, tennis has always found a respectableplace. Its appeal to the status of the affluent has made the sport asignificant profession in post-independence India. Like cricket andsoccer, the birth of tennis in India was through her erstwhile colonialmasters—the British.1 Along with the numero uno sport of the country,cricket, imported to India as early as first-half of the eighteenthcentury2 and soccer, closely associated with the nationalist movement,3

the introduction of this archetypal gentlemen's sport has beenattributed to the recreation of the British officers. This aspect of sportspromotion, it may be stated, stemmed from ideologies of the empireand was replicated in most other colonies. In Britain, as J. A. Manganshows, headmasters used organized sport and controlled leisure timeoutside the classroom to control time inside it.4 In a similar way, thebirth of tennis in India was greatly stimulated by local Europeanadministrators and it was from their European teachers that Indian boysgot their first lessons in the game. Despite the rich legacy of tennis inIndia, however, Indian tennis players have rarely reached the worldstandard. Until the 1980s, they were satisfied with the tag of 'also-rans'in one of the most commercially viable of modern international sports.

Things changed since the last decade, when Indian tennis made aquantum leap. The meteoric rise of the combination of Leander Paesand Mahesh Bhupathi miraculously transformed the fortune of Indiantennis.5 Statistically speaking, this racquet sport has fetched morelaurels for the country than any other in the last decade in theinternational sporting arena. 1996 marked the watershed of Indiantennis when Leander Paes became only the second Indian (not countingthe Calcutta-boy Norman Pritchard's double silver at the 1900 ParisOlympics)6 to clinch an individual medal in the history of theOlympics, after diminutive wrestler Khasaba Yadav had grabbed a

The International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol.21, Nos.3/4, June-Sept. 2004, pp.452^66ISSN 0952-3367 print/1743-9035 onlineDOI: 10.1080/0952336042000223126 © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

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The History of Indian Tennis 453

bronze in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.7 A year later, when Leander'snow estranged doubles-partner Mahesh Bhupathi, partnered by RikaHiraki of Japan lifted the French Open Mixed Doubles title at RolandGarros, a new window was opened in the horizon of India'sinternational sport.

Bhupathi's historic triumph at Roland Garros opened the floodgatefor Grand Slam titles, and till date the Indian duo of Leander andBhupathi have accumulated 13 Grand Slam titles between them(Leander has won 6 while Mahesh has won seven), which includesLeander's historic mixed doubles triumph at Wimbledon in 2003,partnering the legendary Martina Navratilova.8

Though the once invincible world number one pair of Leander andMahesh do not play together any more, their prowess in doubles withdifferent partners still fetches them the much coveted Grand Slamtitles. India's phenomenal ascent as a tennis superpower was furtherconsolidated by the Girls' doubles crown won by Sania Mirza inWimbledon 2003. Interestingly, India's performance in Wimbledon2003 was better than that of the US, with India emerging as the mostsuccessful nation in the tournament with two titles and one runner uptrophy in her kitty, better than any other country.9

The emergence of enterprising youngsters like Prakash Amritraj,Rohan Bopanna, Harsh Mankad and Sunil Kumar and the phenomenalrise of Indian girls like Sania Mirza, Isha Lakhani, Ankita Bhambri,Tara Iyer, Sanaa Bhambri and Megha Vakharia, along with thetowering presence of the legendary Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathiin the ATP doubles circuit, have certainly catapulted the erstwhile'also-rans' or occasional 'giant-killers' to respectable heights in worldtennis.

THE BEGINNINGS

Lawn tennis in India dates back to the years of the first Wimbledon. Itis difficult to say who, if any, introduced the game in India - like MaryOuterbridge in USA - but tennis was seen being played by the BritishArmy Officers in their barracks as early as the 1880's in North India.10

A few years later, a regular tournament was started at the LahoreGymkhana Club (now in Pakistan), known as the Punjab Lawn TennisChampionships (1885), followed by the Bengal Lawn TennisChampionships at Calcutta in 1887."

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'54 Sport in South Asian Society

Under the initiative of the colonial officers the All India LawnTennis Championships was first played at Allahabad in 1910, a decadebefore the birth of the All India Lawn Tennis Association. Thetournament included men's singles, ladies singles and men's doublescompetitions. The mixed doubles event was added a year later. The firstmen's champion was E. Matkinson and the honour of being the firstladies champion went to Mrs. Kendel. As the game spread to otherparts of India, regional tournaments started featuring in the tenniscalendar. A tournament, almost as old as the All India Championship,was the Sind Lawn Tennis Championship initiated in 1912.12

In the initial years, Indian involvement in lawn tennis wasinsignificant. It was not until 1915 that an Indian became a championin any of these major competitions. Indian elites slowly picked up thegame by the second decade of the twentieth century. Long before anyIndian became a champion in the above mentioned tournaments, a UK-based Sikh, Sardar Nihal Singh, played and lost in his maidenencounter at Wimbledon in 1908, the first ever Indian to do so.Wimbledon records reveal that another Indian of obscure origin, B.Nehru, had entered the Wimbledon singles championship in 1905, fouryears before Nihal Singh's endeavour. However, Nehru gave a walkoverto his opponent. Nihal Singh, who played in Wimbledon in 1909 and1910, was soon joined by the Fyzee brothers. No more Indians figuredin the Wimbledon lists until 1920.13

By the 1920s, the Indians had started taking an active interest in thegame. The first Indian who competed the Europeans on even terms wasMohammed Sleem (Mohammed Salim) of Lahore who won his firstPunjab Championship title in 1915 and several times thereafter. N.S.Iyer, yet another home-grown hero, bagged the Bengal Championshiptitle in 1917. Two years later, in 1919, one Nagu lifted the moreprestigious All India Championship crown at Allahabad, the first Indianto do so. In the South, T.B. Balagopal was the first native to win theSouth India Tennis Championship title in 1923.14 Despite thesevictories, colonial patronage of tennis had not waned. Having importedsport to discipline the colonial subjects, colonialists tended to look uponnative prowess in European sports as symbolic of the success of theimperial agenda. The suggestion that native success on the sportingfield could bring in its wake a nationalist resurgence was peremptorilydismissed. This may have been prompted, as Boria Majumdar argues,'by an underlying realization and consequent apprehension that sport

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The History of Indian Tennis 455

had the potential to stir up national resurgence in the colonies; andimperialists did their best to blunt this potential. Consequently, onoccasions of native triumph on the sporting field, what the colonizersemphasized was the harmony and sporting spirit demonstrated by rivalEuropean and Indian teams following sporting encounters, rather thanthe significance of a native victory. That the spirit of celebrations neverwent beyond the acceptable norms associated with sport was touted as asuccess of the colonial enterprise.'15

Lawn tennis had a home in India when the All India Lawn TennisAssociation (AILTA), the governing body of the sport, was set upin 1920. At this historic meeting a constitution and by-laws on the linesof the constitution of the Lawn Tennis Association of Britain wasdrawn up. In November 1920, the first Annual General Meeting(AGM) of the AILTA was held at the Town Hall in Delhi, the firstPresident being Samuel Perry O'Donnell, a British member of theIndian Civil Service (ICS). A fine tennis player himself, O'Donnellplayed in Wimbledon more than once, first entering in 1913. He becamethe Secretary, Home Department, Government of India in March 1921.The two Honorary Joint Secretaries who assisted O'Donnell were C. P.Boys and A. C. Gupta. While the tennis connection of Boys is notknown, records reveal that he was a British judge of the Allahabad HighCourt. The first Indian Secretary, A.C. Gupta, was a keen tennisplayer. He represented Delhi in the Inter-Provincial Tournament in1922. Gupta continued to hold the post for several years and was thePresident of AILTA in 1934-35.16

With the formation of the Association, a flurry of activity ensued.Soon after, India made a dramatic debut in the Davis Cup in 1921. TheIndian team at the Davis Cup was led by S.M. Jacob, a British I.C.S.Officer and included Sleem, A. A. Fyzee and L.S. Dean. After getting awalk-over in the first round they faced a tennis superpower in France.Amazingly, the rookie Indians upstaged the hot-favourite French team,comprising of one of the "Four Musketeers"-John Brugnon on Frenchsoil. The victory margin was 4-1 in Paris as India secured a place in thesemi-finals against Japan. But soon the Indians had to bite the dust asthe Japanese, led by Calcutta lad Zenzo Shimizu, drubbed India 5-0 toset a title clash with eventual winner USA.17

Three years later, India sailed to participate in the Paris Olympics(1924) and returned with impressive results. While Sleem lost toeventual champion V. Richards (USA) after a five set duel in the third

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found, S.M. Hadi and D. Rutnam made it to the quarter finals, indoubles. In 1929 Jenny Sandison from Kharagpur in Bengal became thefirst woman of Indian origin to play at Wimbledon, losing in the firstround.18 This is significant because it makes room for the argument thatthe origin of women's tennis in India was closely tied with themovement for women's suffrage and emancipation in colonialconditions. With the establishment of the All India Women's Congressin 1918, the move for women's suffrage gathered momentum.19 Aroundthis time, some women commentators espoused the cause of women'ssport, demanding better sports facilities for women. That there was aclose link between the suffrage movement and the introduction and/ordevelopment of women's sport was not a new or unique phenomenon.With the establishment of the All India Women's Congress in 1918,attempts were made to give women a voice absent throughout thenineteenth century. With men acting on behalf of their femalecounterparts, women had, through the nineteenth century, remainedto borrow Lata Mani's term a 'site' upon which the colonial state andthe Indian intelligentia had discussed issues of governance andreform.20 As part of this broader movement for emancipation, sport,especially European sports, gained currency among Indian women.Prowess in sport, it may be stated, provided a sense of community toIndian women from disparate backgrounds, who, in a patriarchalsociety, had been united by the expediencies of history. Earliestevidences of Indian women playing tennis go back to the 1920s.

By the 1930s, Indian tennis had come of age. Great excitementgripped Indian tennis lovers as foreign teams visited the country almostevery year to play at invitation and national tournaments. The mostcolourful personalities among them were G. de Steffani from Italy,'Bunny' Austin from Great Britain, J. Pallada and F. Puncec fromYugoslavia, Henri Cochet from France and the greatest among of themall 'Big Bill' Tilden from USA. Calcutta tennis lovers still remembernostalgically the match between the two all time greats, Cochet andTilden at the invitation tournament played on the lawns of the SouthClub, the home of Calcutta tennis. Cochet won the contest 6-2, 4-6, 9-7, 6-2. The Indian stars who figured prominently in these tournamentswere Sleem, Cotah Ramaswami, Krishna Prasada, E.V. Bobb, SohanLall, D.N. Kapoor, Ahad Hussain, Yudhistir Singh, N. Krishnaswamyfollowed by H.L. Soni, S.L.R. Sawhney, Iftikhar Ahmed and GhausMohammed.21

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It was Chennai-born multi-faceted left-hander Cotah Ramaswami,who carved out for himself a special place in the annals of Indian tennis.Ramaswami, a Cambridge "Blue", made his debut for India in theDavis Cup in 1922 as the Indian team was depleted by the absence ofJacob and Sleem. But the rookie readily made his mark registering twosuperb wins in the doubles against Romania and subsequently againstSpain. This was the only occasion when the maverick sportsmanrepresented his country in Tennis.22 Fourteen years later, in 1936,Ramaswamy achieved a rare feat as he donned the national cap in Testcricket against England, thus becoming the only Indian, till date, torepresent the country in both cricket and tennis. However, it was thegreat Ghaus Mohammed who created the biggest wave in tennis incolonial India by reaching the quarterfinals at Wimbledon in 1939.23

The 1930s also witnessed the appearance of an outstanding womanplayer in Miss Leela Row. With a first round victory at Wimbledon in1934 over G.M. Southwell (Britain), Row became the first Indianwoman to win a match at Wimbledon.24 It is worth mentioning in thiscontext that Ramaswamy was no exception and a hierarchization ofsport, integral to modern Indian sport, was, to quote Boria Majumdar 'apost 1940s phenomenon'. Statistics reveal that till the 1940s many ofIndia's noted footballers, tennis and hockey players were also notedcricketers, a phenomenon that was fundamentally transformed in post-independence India. This contention is best supported by the historiesof sport in the educational institutions. Students, records indicate,made no distinction between various sports and indulged in all forms ofphysical activity till the end of the 1930s. This explains thesimultaneous formations of soccer and cricket clubs in leading Indiancolleges from the late nineteenth century.25 Cricket grounds were alsoused for playing football and hockey, the same group of students oftenengaged in all the three games. In Bengal, most sportsmen showedprowess in cricket, tennis and football and until the end of the 1930s,there was no notion of tennis and cricket being elite sports. Suchconditions were, however, transformed in independent India, a reversalfirmly in place by the end of the 1950s.26

In the post-Second World War period, the National Championships,traditionally played on grass courts, was inaugurated at Calcutta'sSouth Club, which often earned the sobriquet as the 'Wimbledon of theEast'. 7 The inaugural year, 1946, saw the participation of one of themost colourful sportspersons ever, Czechoslovakian left-hander Jaroslav

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Drobny, a Wimbledon semi-finalist that year and a Winter Olympicssilver medallist in ice-hockey. However, the winner of the French Openin 1951 and 1952 and Wimbledon in 1954 and the first European playerto be on a National Hockey League (NHL) team's reserve list whenselected by the Boston Bruins in 1947; he succumbed to an elbow injuryand surrendered to Man-Mohan Lai in the semi-final. Big servingSumant Mishra emerged as the first National Champion beating Man-Mohan Lai in the final. The first woman Champion was Khanum Singh(nee Haji). It is little known that such great and famous players like V.Schmidt (Sweden, 1957), Roy Emerson (Australia, 1961), Illie Nastase(Romania, 1968) and Tom Gorman (USA, 1976), and in the women'sevent, Althea Gibson (USA, 1955) have taken home Indian NationalCrowns.28

Starting with Drobny, the long list of star-failures among foreignerswas headed by Romanian Ian Tiriac (in 1967) and A. Metreveli of theerstwhile Soviet Union (in 1969). A newly independent India organizedits first international tournament in the country in 1949 - the Asianchampionship - and Dilip Bose made India proud by wining theinaugural championship title on the lawns of the South Club inCalcutta. This earned him a seeding at the Wimbledon singles draw in1950, an Indian first.29

THE GREAT LEGACY OF JUNIOR CHAMPS

In the early 1950s for the first time, two Indian juniors made a mark atWimbledon. Rita Davar was a runner-up in the Girls' singles event in1952 while Ramanathan Krishnan won the Wimbledon Boys Cham-pionship title in 1954, the first ever Asian to do so.30 This initiated agreat legacy of Indian triumphs at the junior competitions ofWimbledon. Not weighed down by the epical legacy of his father,Ramesh Krishnan emulated his father's feat in 1979. Finally, in 1990,defeating South African Michael Ondrouska, the "Golden Boy" ofIndian tennis Leander Paes emulated his feat, becoming the thirdIndian to win the Wimbledon junior title. In 2003, when the Hyderabadteenager Sania Mirza clinched the junior doubles crown at Wimbledonpartnering Alisa Kleybanova of Russia, it was more than a personaltriumph for Mirza widely viewed as a sort of empowerment for womenin India. Sania's triumph was soon used by the women and childwelfare wing of the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance

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(NDA) government to initiate a public campaign for the empowermentof the Indian girl child.31

Besides the eventual winners, two other world-class contemporariesof Ramanathan Krishnan, Premjit Lai (1958) and Jaideep Mukherjea(1960), and later the youngest of the Amritraj's, Ashok - who hangedhis racquet quite early to become one of the most prolific producers inHollywood with his production house Hyde Park Entertainment,narrowly missed the title being losing finalists at the junior Wimbledon.In 1992, Mahesh Bhupathi, pairing with former national championNitin Kirtane, also reached the doubles final of the junior competitionat Wimbledon.32

THE ERA OF GIANT KILLERS: UNBELIVABLE GALLANTRY YETSHATTERED DEAMS

The golden era of Indian tennis arrived in the 1960s with the successes ofRamanathan Krishnan who reached the semi-finals of Wimbledon twicein 1960 and 1961. In 1961, Krishnan outclassed legendary Roy Emerson,whose long-standing world record career haul of 13 Grand Slams singlestitles was toppled by Pete Sampras in 2001, in straight sets in thequarter-finals of Wimbledon before surrendering to the eventual winnerRod Laver in the semi-finals. In the next year, Krishnan earned hishighest ever seeding in Wimbledon (No 4) but unfortunately had toretire in the third round match due to an ankle injury.33

Though a Wimbledon title eluded him, Krishnan was unofficiallyranked within the top 10 of the world more than once, reaching hishighest unofficial career ranking of No. 3 in 1959, the year he won thefamous Queen's Club (London) title as well as the US Hard CourtChampionship title (Denver). He created history when he steered thecountry to the Davis Cup final for the first time ever in 1966, teamingup with Jaideep Mukherjea, Premjit Lall and Shiv Prasad Mishra.Formidable Aussies at their home-turf in Melbourne, comprising ofsuperstars Emerson, John Newcombe, Tony Roche and Fred Stolle,shattered the great Indian title dream by thrashing them 4-1 in thefinal. However, the pair of Krishnan and Mukherjea restored somepride for India as they beat Roche-Newcombe, the previous year'sWimbledon doubles champions.34

Soon after the senior Krishnan and his cohorts faded away, Indiantennis witnessed the arrival of another Chennai-born doyen, Vijay

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Amitraj, the foremost flag-bearer of the legendary Amritraj family.Followed by Ramesh Krishnan, they initiated another period of greatexpectation from the early 1970s. Both Vijay and Ramesh could not,however, progress beyond the quarterfinal stage in Grand Slamtournaments.

In the 1973 Wimbledon quarter final, Vijay was leading Jan Kodes(Czech), the eventual champion, in the fifth set 5-^ and 30-0 when hemissed an easy overhead smash a few feet away from the net. Thatinfamous 'smash' probably costed Vijay a life-time chance of winningthe most coveted tennis crown. In his memoir Vijay wrote 'that smashcould possibly have meant the difference between winning aWimbledon title...' 35

India reached the Davis Cup finals twice more in 1974 and 1987 inthe era of Amritraj brothers, Vijay and Anand and also RameshKrishnan. While Vijay, who formed the ABC of world tennis alongwith legendary Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors, attained his highestcareer ranking of World No. 16 (ATP) in July 1980, Ramesh's best wasNo. 23 in 1985 (January), but the dream of touching the summitremained elusive for them.36

HALCYON DAYS AND THEREAFTER

In the 1990s Indian tennis was dominated by one of its greatest sportinglegends in Leander Adrian Paes. He was born to a family ofsportspersons with father Dr Vece Paes a former hockey Olympianand mother Jennifer having represented India in basketball. Leander ledthe way for a new generation of young tennis talents that includedZeeshan Ali, Gaurav Natekar, Asif Ismail, Mahesh Bhupathi andothers. Paes who won the Junior Wimbledon (1990) and Junior USOpen (1991) helped redefine India's position in world tennis winning aBronze (singles) by trouncing Fernando Meligeni of Brazil at theAtlanta Olympic in 1996.

Towards accomplishing this incredible feat, Paes, then ranked only126, thwarted challenges from several higher-ranked opponents such asRitchie Reneberg of USA (then world number 20) and Thomas Enqvistof Sweden (then world number 10) to secure a semi-final berth againstthe eventual gold-medallist Andre Agassi, who stopped the fairy-talerun of Paes.37 Interestingly, Paes' bronze brought an end to anagonizing 16 years-old Olympics medal drought for India. The last time

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the country won an Olympic medal was gold in hockey at the 1980Moscow Olympic games.

The Olympics laurel was just another feather for Leander Paes. Rightafter making his debut for the country at the age of 16, Leander, whopersonifies athleticism and patriotism, gifted his beloved motherlandquite a few memorable victories over the years. This list of top-classplayers who had to bite the dust against the awesome play of Paes inDavis Cup matches includes Jeremy Bates in 1992 (then British numberone), Jacob Hlasek of Switzerland in 1993, Henri Laconte of France,Wayne Ferreira of South Africa and former Wimbledon championGoran Ivansevic - who would never forget the nightmarish defeat in agruelling five-setter in the World Group qualifying tie between Indiaand Croatia in New Delhi in 1995.38 Apart from outclassing severalpremier players from the ATP tour, the heroics of the Indian tenniswizard, who is now an occasional singles player in the ATP tour, didn'teven spare legendary Pete Sampras. In the 1998 Pilot Pen InternationalHardcourt tournament, the all-time highest career Grand Slam singleswinner and then world number two, Sampras was trounced by Paes instraight sets in the third round. This stupendous landmark of Paes wasa gargantuan leap for Indian tennis.

Alongside Paes, big-serving Mahesh Bhupathi created more tennishistory for India the following year to become the first ever Indian towin a Grand Slam title (mixed doubles) at the French Open in 1997pairing Japanese Rika Hiraki.

The combination of Paes and Bhupathi, better known as the "IndianExpress", soon became a top class doubles pair, upstaging the legendaryWoodies - Mark Woodford and Todd Woodbridge. During the three-year period between 1997 to 1999 they won 13 ATP titles, two GrandSlam doubles crowns, the French Open and Wimbledon (both in 1999)and twice reached the finals of the World Doubles Championshiptournament in New York (1997 and 1999). Creditably, Paes andBhupathi added a Grant Slam mixed doubles title each in 1999 - Paeswining at Wimbledon and Bhupathi at the US Open. They finished 1999as the No. 1 doubles pair of the world and to their credit Paes andBhupathi finished the year as the World's No. 1 and No. 2 individualdoubles players, setting unparalleled records in Indian and Asian tennis.In 1999 the "Indian Express" also reached the finals of all four GrandSlams, becoming the first ever doubles team in the open era (i.e. since1968) to reach the finals of all four Grand Slams in a single calendar year.

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Paes/Bhupathi's successes spilled over to the new millennium, theduo winning their third Grand Slam title together at the French Openin 2001. Playing separately thereafter, Bhupathi earned two more titlesin 2002 - a men's doubles title at the US Open with Max Mirnyi(Belarus) and a mixed doubles crown at Wimbledon with ElenaLikhovtseva (Russia). Paes won two more mixed doubles titles in 2003pairing Martina Navratilova. While the first was at the Australian Open,the other was at Wimbledon (Table 1).

TENNIS IN THE DIASPORA

Of late, the diaspora has been one of the most celebrated and talkedabout subjects in the country, manifest from the fact that the year 2003marked the celebration of the first official Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas(Non-resident Indian Day) on 11 January, to annually commemoratethe Indian presence in the diaspora. The sporting arena is no exceptionas a few Indian origin sportspersons have created ripples in the world oftennis. Of the diasporic Indians, British national Arvind Parmar hascertainly grabbed the attention more than any other. Hitchin-bornParmar is presently the number three tennis player in Britain, afterveteran warhorses Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski in the ATPranking. Although the 25 year old has yet to make any respectableimpact in the ATP tour and has an ATP ranking of below 200, in hishomeland he has already found an iconic status.

TABLE 1GRAND SLAM TITLES OF PAES AND BHUPATHI (TO 15 AUGUST 2003)

Men's Doubles1999

20012002Mixed Doubles19971999

20022003

Leander Paes/Mahesh BhupathiLeander Paes/Mahesh BhupathiLeander Paes/Mahesh BhupathiMahesh Bhupathi/Max Mirnyi (Belarus)

Mahesh Bhupathi/Rika Hiraki (Japan)Leander Paes/Lisa Raymond (USA)Mahesh Bhupathi /Ai Sugiyama (Japan)Mahesh Bhupathi /Elena Likhovtseva (Russia)Leander Paes/Martina Navratilova (USA)Leander Paes/Martina Navratilova (USA)

Winners French OpenWinners WimbledonWinners French OpenWinner US Open

Winners French OpenWinners WimbledonWinners US OpenWinners WimbledonWinners Australian OpenWinners Wimbledon

Mahesh Bhupathi's total tally: 7 (4 doubles, 3 mixed doubles)Leander Paes's total tally: 6 (3doubles, 3 mixed doubles)

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Alongside Parmar, leading this youth NRI brigade is PrakashAmritraj, son of Indian tennis legend Vijay Amritraj. Prakash, along

'with his US-based cousin Stephen, son of Anand Amritraj, promises tocarry forward the great Amritraj legacy, which catapulted Indian tennisto a respectable height in the 70s and 80s. Granted Indian citizenship in2002, Prakash launched his career in style, registering a hat-trick in theIndian Satellite Tour of 2003, winning two legs and the covetedMasters. After making his Indian singles debut as a wild card entrant inthe 2003 Tata Open, Prakash has come a long way to establish himselfas the numero uno Indian player after Leander and Mahesh.

Rajeev Ram is another player who has created ripples in the USjunior circuit recently. Carmel-based Rajeev, who has secured a regularplace in the US junior Davis Cup team, is already a big name in the UScollege tennis circuit. The 6 ft 4inch rookie has been regarded as the topcollege tennis recruit in 2002 and justified this honour by securing aplace in the finals of 2002 Wimbledon juniors competition. In doubles,Rajeev and his fellow countryman Brian Baker was beaten by theRomanian pair of Florin Mergea and Horia Lecau in a fiercely foughttitle clash. Courtesy Sania Mirza and her fairytale Wimbledon Juniordoubles triumph, women's tennis too witnessed a sort of empowermentin the last couple of years but in the diaspora it was Sunitha Rao whocatapulted the game to a higher level than what her Indian counterpartshave done so far.

US-bred Sunitha Rao, coming out of the gruelling US Juniornationals, has emerged as a force to reckon with in women's tennis inthe near future. With her series of stupendous performances in the USNationals, she is already in the top 200 of the WTA ranking.Incidentally, in the Wimbledon Juniors competition 2003, Sunitha wasthe top seed among the girls, although her title dream was shattered byan injury in the early rounds resulting in her defeat in the quarter-finals.39

THE FUTURE

Tennis has already acquired the status of one of India's premier sports,at least for those who consider victories the benchmark for popularity.It is the only sport in which India's leading lights, Leander Paes (careerprize money $ 3,190,726 till the end of 2003) and Mahesh Bhupathi(career prize money $ 3,159,910 till the end of 2003), earn more than

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the premier cricketers, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and SouravGanguly. Even in 2003, Mahesh accumulated prize money of US$ 478,298 and despite missing the latter half of the season Leander's earningwas a significant US$ 244,225. Yet, the hoi polloi and the corporatehouses regard cricket as more lucrative and a bigger money-spinner.

To combat this peculiarity, the governing body, AITA, has beentrying a number of schemes. Apart from setting up the national tennisacademy in Gurgaon (in the outskirts of Delhi), AITA has initiated anumber of development programmes in the sub-junior and junior level,also increasing the number of junior level tournaments. In recent timesthe AITA has started sending a few top-class and promising juniorplayers, including junior Wimbledon doubles champion Sania Mirza,abroad to expose them to the international circuit. 2003 also witnessedthe start of a much ambitious 'Tennis Express' programme, involving afew hundred schools in the country.

While acknowledging that the successes achieved by Leander andMahesh has encouraged many a youngster in the country to take uptennis, in singles as also in women's tennis at the senior level, Indiacontinues to remain a microscopic entity. Women spectators, key to thepopularity of tennis elsewhere, are still rarities in India with physicallydemanding sports considered a male domain, taboo for middle classwomen. In contrast to most Western nations, women stars in India areeither members of the lower classes who try their hands at sport with noother tangible means of livelihood in sight or are from very richfamilies. The middle classes, as a norm, stay away from competitivesport. Women's sports associations continue to stagnate with financialcrisis a permanent companion of the women's game. Leading stars arehardly given due recognition, and jobs on offer on account of theirsporting prowess are never higher than the clerical grade. It iscommonplace to see noted women stars starving after retirement, oftenrescued from such plight by welfare organizations and sportsenthusiasts. The attitude of the Indian male, the nature of thedevelopment of urban Indian societies after independence and the storyof women's emancipation in the country have all had a role to play incrippling the development of women's sport. Always keen to relegatehis woman to the household, the average Indian male has hardly everencouraged their women to play. Looked upon as a sport unsuited towomen, given their physical built, women's tennis is still taboo in manyIndian middle class homes. Daughters or wives playing sport are

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considered a disgrace to the family with ostracism from society theoutcome of such forays. Under such circumstances, women are oftenforcibly stopped from playing, while in many other cases women hardlyever attempt to play, having grown up to understand that competitivesport is something alien to them and reserved for men only. The onlyconcession made is in the case of women spectators, but even then, theyare hardly ever permitted to look beyond the television screen. Thenumber of women spectators, in comparison to men, is negligible, oftenless than 2% of the entire spectator base in the country. Strangelyenough, women themselves have also contributed to this plight. Thestory of women's emancipation in India has included little attempt bywomen themselves to encourage women's sports like Tennis. Mostmeasures undertaken to develop women's sport was in the colonialperiod, and post independence women activists hardly consider itrelevant to protest against notions that sport continues to be a malepreserve, hardly allowing women's involvement. Such apathy,stimulated and encouraged by the attitude of the Indian male, hasmade women's sport an extremely limited vocation in modern India.

NOTES

1. For details see; P.K. Datta, A Century of Indian Tennis (New Delhi: Ministry of Informationand Broadcasting, Publications Division, 2001).

2. Boria Majumdar, Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom: A Social History of Indian Cricket (NewDelhi: Penguin/Viking, 2003).

3. For details see Kausik Bandyopadhyay's essay in this volume.4. For details see; J. A. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School

(London: Frank C a s s , 2000).5. They were, besides chess-player Vishwanathan Anand, the only two sports personalities who

could compete with the cricketers in popularity and economic affluence.6. Pritchard, a former St. Xavier's student later went to star in the Hollywood classic, Beau Geste

(1939).7. It is only very recently that K.D. Yadav was awarded the Khel Ratna (sport's greatest prize in

India) by the Indian Government for his contribution to Indian sports.8. Martina Navratilova, 46, thus became the oldest Grand Slam Champion.9. While Leander Paes won the mixed doubles and Sania Mirza the girls doubles, Rajeev Ram, an

NRI, won the junior runner-up crown.10. Datta, A Century of Indian Tennis.11. Ibid.12. Ibid.13. Ibid.14. Ibid.15. Boria Majumdar, 'Cricket in Colonial India, 1880-1947' (unpublished D.Phil Thesis,

University of Oxford, 2004).16. P.K. Datta, interview, New Delhi, Dec. 2003.17. Datta, India in Davis Cup (1921-1995) (New Delhi: Siddharth Publications, 1996).18. Datta, A Century of Indian Tennis.

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19. Through the 1920s, women in most of the Indian states earned voting rights. Sarojini Naidu'scampaign for women's suffrage was to a large extent responsible for this development.

20. This argument, advanced by Lata Mani, has been extremely influential in recent writings onIndian History. Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions (California: University of California Press,1998).

21. Ibid.22. Datta, India in Davis Cup (1921-1995).23. Datta, A Century of Indian Tennis.24. Ibid.25. On many occasions the clubs formed were for both cricket and football. At Presidency College

Calcutta, a combined Cricket and Football Club was formed in 1891. In the VidyasagarCollege, a cricket and football club was formed under Professor Saradaranjan Ray in the 1890s.

26. Majumdar, Cricket in Colonial India, 1880-1947.27. Located in South Calcutta, the Club is one of Calcutta's most posh social clubs.28. Datta, A Century of Indian Tennis.29. Ibid.30. Ibid.31. Sania Mirza, personal Interview for Sahara Time (July 2003).32. Datta, A Century of Indian Tennis.33. For details of Ramanathan Krishnan's career see Ramanathan Krishnan, Ramesh Krishnan

and Nirmal Sekhar, A Touch of Tennis: The Story of a Tennis Family (New Delhi: PenguinBooks, 1999).

34. Ibid.35. For details see Vijay Amritraj and Richard Evans, Vijay Amritraj: An Autobiography (New

Delhi: Rupa and Company, 1990).36. For details of Ramesh's career see Krishnan et al., A Touch of Tennis.37. P.K. Datta, A Century of Indian Tennis.38. For details see Datta, India in Davis Cup (1921-1995).39. Sunitha's long-cherished dream of donning the Indian tricolour was shattered last year when

her plea to represent India was rejected by the WTF. As a result of the rejection, her father,Manohar Rao entangled himself in a controversial spat with the AITA, claiming acompensation on the money he spent to groom his daughter as a professional tennis player.

40. Satires have been written about how women spend their time at cricket grounds knittingsweaters, socializing and eating; Grahamandal (Dec. 1960).

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