Tennis – India’s Davis Cup captain Mahesh Bhupathi says that tennis is not a priority in India and that badminton has become much more popular as compared to tennis due to the rise of multiple players such as PV Sindhu, Saina Nehwal, Parupalli Kashyap and Pullela Gopichand.
Speaking in Delhi where he was part of the KIA Australian Open Ballkids International Program, Bhupathi commented, “I am not the right person to answer because I have a very biased view. Sania Mirza created a revolution 10 years ago when it came to tennis.
She broke all boundaries, she was playing in the third round of the Australian Open, third round of Wimbledon, everybody in India was watching her. But what happened after that? We don’t have another 5 Sania’s. So I don’t think tennis is a priority in our country.
Today badminton is way above tennis because of (PV) Sindhu, Saina (Nehwal), (Parupalli) Kashyap and Gopi (Pullela Gopichand). You need to have multiple success stories non-stop that pushes people to want to aspire and unfortunately, in India, it doesn’t exist.” Bhupathi added that having an Indian tennis league may not help make the sport more popular.
“Today if you have an Indian league for tennis you don’t have 40 players to pick from. Can you name the top-10 players in India, that’s the concern; can you name the top five female tennis players in India? Case closed.
The whole system is lacking right now. If we have a player consistently playing the Grand Slams and the country following them then it’s a start. Unfortunately, we did not have this media 10 years ago, if we had this media a decade back when Sania was successful, I think things could have been different.
Today we can watch our Indian boys playing the Australian Open and the other Grand Slams. All these we didn’t have but I think it will only get better but we need to have someone who is representing us in every Grand Slam.” Also Read – Jo-Wilfried Tsonga Reflects on Davis Cup Loss
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