Indian Davis Cup captain Rohit Rajpal: We do have an ageing team, most of our players are tilting towards doubles
Indian Davis Cup captain Rohit Rajpal: We do have an ageing team, most of our players are tilting towards doubles
India is set to begin its Davis Cup campaign with a World Group I Playoff against lower-ranked Togo at the DLTA complex in New Delhi this weekend.
Last year, the team travelled to Pakistan for the first time in 60 years and won 4-0 at the same stage in Islamabad. However, its hopes of progressing to the qualifying round of the Davis Cup for the first time since the 2020-21 edition were dashed as it went down 0-4 away to Sweden in a World Group I tie in September.
The team played both ties without its top-ranked singles players – Sumit Nagal and S. Mukund – while Yuki Bhambri, country’s No.1 doubles player, opted out of the match against Sweden.
While Sumit and Yuki continue to be unavailable, Mukund has returned to the squad after being suspended by the All India Tennis Association for missing the Pakistan tie. Ramkumar Ramanathan, Karan Singh, N. Sriram Balaji and Rithvik Bollipalli make the rest of the squad.
In an interview with Sportstar, Rajpal addresses Mukund’s return, the unavailability of Sumit and Yuki, and also speaks about the youngsters currently training with the main squad:
We do both but unfortunately, this time, we’ve not been able to find anything. Normally, we have an assessment team that does a full analysis of all the players that we’re going to be playing, in terms of what their favourite serving points are, and other data but this time, we’ve not been able to find any footage for these guys. We are waiting for them to show up and then, we can probably try to record their sessions as well.
We bumped into each other at the services tournament at DLTA and we had a fruitful chat. We sat down and I explained to him that not making yourself available for your country is not a done thing and the values that are important for Davis Cup – the ones I learnt from my seniors – and playing for your nation should continue. There is a responsibility of being India’s number one or number two. The whole country, the juniors who are coming up, and everyone else is watching. These are important and responsible positions. Their acts are all watched very carefully. Also, whatever little grievances he had, I had to sort them out if there was a communication gap between the AITA and him. They all were sorted very amicably. We’re very happy to have him back.
NTC has shut down but I do believe that at some point, we will restart. We need to go back to the drawing board and start again. As far as Karan goes, he’s a young, bright guy. He’s got a big game and when you have a big game, sometimes, you tend to over hit. As you mature as a player, you need to know when to hit, when not to, or when to slow down, etc. Those kinds of tactics come with experience and age and the whole purpose of having all these youngsters, a second ring that we’ve identified, is to get them ready as well. We do have an ageing team and most of our players are tilting towards doubles which has become a great challenge for us. So, we are looking to build the next ring very quickly to start playing singles.
Absolutely. Whenever I get a chance, I would definitely like to put in a player that we think will be playing for the future because those are good opportunities for them. No matter where you’re playing, it is always high pressure and in the first couple of matches, a player needs to get used to the environment, start getting your game and playing freely.
It is very important for us to now get all these youngsters and build them up very quickly for singles in the team because we do have four out of five points in singles.
Last time, for the Sweden tie, Sumit’s back was not in a good position and he didn’t think he was fit enough to be there, which is fair enough. If my player tells me that, I certainly listen to him. For the upcoming tie against Togo, I was a little disappointed as I really thought that he would make himself available and be there. But for reasons known to him, he opted out. This DLTA centre court really suits his game a lot. And when I was just deciding the surface, yes, we did have a chat and he was very comfortable with the centre court at DLTA.
We tried to reach out to him, but I think he’s a little disappointed that he didn’t get a chance to play at the (Paris) Olympics. We tried to explain to him that the AITA had very little to do because Rohan (Bopanna) was the Top 10 player and normally, it’s a prerogative of the Top 10 player to choose his partner. And from before, we’ve tried not to interfere because doubles is something you don’t ask somebody to play with. It needs to be a good combination, camaraderie and good energy between two players to be able to represent. Normally, you leave it to the number one player to choose. And that’s what we did. But Yuki felt that he should have been there and maybe we should have done that, but it’s always going to be difficult to do that. And we tried to explain that to him.
The whole idea is to build these guys up because they need more exposure, travelling, playing bigger events and obviously, a lot of things need to be corrected in the game besides, of course, the experience of taking the pressure and to be able to play under pressure like this in a Davis Cup match. So, we’re also working with them on some areas in their games. So, it’s an all-round experience and I think what we will try to do, once the AITA is sorted with the election and everything else, put a team together to be able to travel and work towards player development for the next ring.
