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Magazine
Past Present
In praise of a touch artist
RAMACHANDRA GUHA
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While on court he was the master of touch and angle, off court, he was the perfect gentleman.
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Photo: V. Ganesan
From another gracious era: Ramanathan Krishnan and Ramesh Krishnan.
It was in a duty-free shop in Heathrow Airport that I bumped into Ramesh Krishnan. We were both catching a flight to Chennai. This was the first time we had met. I had, of course, seen him on and off over the years, sometimes on the box, at other tim
es in the flesh. He had, as we all do, put on some weight on the midriff, but his face was as youthful as ever. Even when he is a grandfather, I thought, this fellow will look like a schoolboy.
I was myself just out of school when I first saw Ramesh play. The national championships of 1974 were held in Delhi; with the splendid DLTA Stadium then still an unrealised dream, the matches were held in the Delhi Gymkhana Club. Temporary stands were put up; a shamiana placed above them, and a ticket booth located at the entrance. One of my college mates, however, had grown up in the Club; so he knew how to get us in from, as it were, the back side, and for free. The first match we watched was the boys’ final, where a 13-year-old Ramesh was playing against his older cousin, Shankar Krishnan. He lost, in three sets; in later years, he was to win that particular title on several occasions, as also the Wimbledon junior championship itself.
Elegance against force
This was in my first year at University; four years later, in my final year, I went to Delhi’s National Stadium to watch India play New Zealand in the Davis Cup. It was rumoured that Ramesh, then just short of his 18th birthday, would make his debut. When a Tamil friend and I — this time, with tickets properly paid for — reached the stadium, Ramesh was warming up on an outside court. My friend asked him in Tamil whether he had been chosen to make the cut. He shrugged non-committally. Half-an-hour later we learnt that he hadn’t; that Anand Amritraj had been chosen as the second singles player. However, after the Amritraj brothers had won the first three rubbers, the coach permitted Ramesh to make his Davis Cup debut against the tall and long-haired right-hander, Jeff Simpson. As always with him or his father, elegance and touch were pitted against force and brawn. Patience and virtue were both rewarded when Ramesh won, in four sets.
In later years too Ramesh usually won when I saw him play. I remember a Davis Cup match in hot and steamy Kolkata, when he came back from a two sets to one deficit to defeat a hard-hitting Italian named Cancelloti. That contest I watched, live; but it was on TV that I saw what must count as the most substantial of all his Davis Cup victories, in Australia in 1987, when he won against Wally Masur to take India into the finals of the championships for the third and probably the last time. I remember this match as much for Ramesh’s exquisite touch as for the rather obvious camaraderie between him and his captain, Vijay Amritraj. There had been much talk in the press about an alleged animosity between the two (said to be a consequence either of the elder Krishnan suppressing Vijay in the past or of Vijay not handing over the Davis Cup captaincy to Ramesh in the present, or both). But as one watched Vijay lovingly towel Ramesh’s racket as the players changed ends, or watched Ramesh grin and joke with his mate, one knew how utterly false those rumours were.
One of the best
The Ramesh match I remember best was played between him and Stefan Edberg in the U.S. Open of 1986. I was then living some 70 miles up the coast from New York; a bad back prevented me from going to Flushing Meadows, so I had to make do with the TV instead. Edberg was then at the top of his form; he was, more or less, the best player in the world. He would serve (at a hundred and fifty miles an hour) and come up to the net; and Ramesh would pass him. At other times he would chip from the back court and come up to the net; and Ramesh would lob him. In between, Edberg served plenty of aces and put away many volleys. It was a terrific contest, matching two very different players and styles of play — the athlete versus the artist, the master of speed and swerve versus the master of touch and angle. It went into five sets; in the end, the Swede won. Afterwards, I watched Edberg being interviewed on courtside. “I’d much rather watch this fellow play against someone else than play him myself,” he confessed.
On the flight from London to Chennai I talked some to Ramesh, to confirm as fact what I had always thought to be the case — that this marvellous tennis player was also a first-class gentleman. I am sure that, reckoned as human beings, there are still some good men left on the tennis circuit. But there is no place anymore for tennis players like the Krishnans, father and son. For, these new graphite rackets have taken all the finesse and artistry out of the game. To be a top-ranking tennis player nowadays you couldn’t play like a Krishnan (or look like one either). That is why some of us don’t care that much for tennis anymore.
ramguha@vsnl.com
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