Facilities aside, the key word is hunger

Tennis | Slowly but surely Indian tennis is headed in the right direction

 

 

 

The second most frequent question I get from the media is ‘What happens to Indian tennis after Paes and Bhupathi?’ For the last 35 years we have always had someone to fly the flag. Vijay Amritraj thrilled with his serve and volley while Ramesh Krishnan’s touch is still talked about on tour today. Leander Paes arguably has the fastest hands the game has ever seen. Then, there is me and now we have our first woman tennis star in Sania Mirza. Three of us came from tennis playing families and Leander and Sania just had too much God given talent not to make it.

 

The structure of building a champion is really complex though slowly but surely Indian tennis is headed in the right direction. Most fans outside India would say that the five names mentioned above have not really achieved much compared to great champions. What they don’t realise is how far behind we are to the West when it comes to basics like physical fitness, mental toughness and nutrition.

 

I recently spent ten days at the LTA’s National Training centre in London and was amazed to see how coaches and trainers apply science to basic coaching with the aim of building the prefect tennis player. The LTA is the richest national federation in tennis and consequently have some of the top coaches and trainers in the world on their rolls. All the players undergo physical exams twice a year to determine what areas of their bodies need focus and how to replenish any missing vitamins and minerals. You would think a country that had this world-class facility added to a world-beating coaching staff would be churning out players like the Australian cricket team. The reality, however, is that we cannot even remember the last time an Englishman or woman won a Grand Slam title.

 

Facilities aside, the key word is hunger. Some countries have issues where there is no structure at all and some are fortunate enough to have one but the kids take it for granted and are not hungry enough to put in the work.

 

We are trying to implement a system in Bangalore at our Elite Academy hoping to find the winning formula. We have hand-picked 15 talented kids from across the country, hired the right coaching staff and support 8 kids through a trust: Foundation for Indian Sporting talent (FIST). The other kids pay the trust to play but know if they perform well, work hard and deliver results they will be added to the elite group who have all their expenses looked after.

 

Fortunately for me, my founding donors to the trust Nandan Nilekani and his wife Rohini watched me win the Mixed Doubles at Wimbledon in 2005, enjoyed it thoroughly and wanted to do something for the sport. They have kick-started it for us with a bang and already in year one we have two under-18 national champions in Akash Wagh and Kyra Shroff. Over the last few years the AITA under Anil Khanna has increased the number of lower level International tournaments in the country. These events give the kids exposure and match practice that is a must in any player’s development.

 

There is no doubt that we have the talent in the country and also have kids who have the hunger. I will keep talking to various corporates and wealthy individuals to fund the Trust and ideally we need to play the numbers game where we try to build 100 professionals and out of them one Grand Slam champion will be born. More and more of corporate India’s money is coming into the sport and the wave has started to roll. For us to successfully ride it for the next twenty years we need to establish a structure like Argentina, Spain and Russia that will allow for an assembly line of players. Clearly the goal is not to build national champions alone. With things falling into place the way they are, don’t be surprised if we see a new Indian singles Grand Slam champion over the next ten years.