Ahead of India’s Davis Cup World Group Playoff tie against Serbia here in 2014, Yuki Bhambri, when asked what the country’s biggest strength was, said: “Doubles. It is the one match where we go in knowing that we are the favourites.”
Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna did combine for a rousing five-set victory then, but in the seven ties after that, India has tried six different combinations and lost five matches, the latest being against Canada last weekend. The only two victories have come against South Korea and Uzbekistan which had doubles players ranked in the thousands.
“We should be alarmed,” said Anand Amritraj, former India captain. “Only because I don’t see an immediate solution. Rohan and Leander are playing with non-Indian partners, and Purav [Raja] and Divij [Sharan] don’t seem to be playing together any more. I’m not really sure where this leaves our doubles.”
India’s problem in recent times has been that the matches it has lost haven’t been against specialist doubles teams, but just scratch pairs. The strongest team it faced was Spain in 2016 — the Rafael Nadal-Marc Lopez pair which had won gold at the Rio Olympics. Paradoxically it was one of India’s better performances.
“We certainly blew it against the Czech Republic in 2015 and against Canada,” said Amritraj.
“We also lost twice to New Zealand. The surprising thing is that none of these were top-five doubles teams, and even [Daniel] Nestor and [Vasek] Pospisil were in a confidence crisis, having lost 13 first round matches in doubles and singles between them.”
These two matches against the Czech Republic and Canada are emblematic of all problems. The much-maligned Indian singles players did as well as they could only to see doubles let the team down. Against the Czechs, Somdev Devvarman produced one of his career-best performances to defeat the then World No. 40 Jiri Vesely. Against Canada, India came within a set of winning three singles matches out of four.
Big shoes to fill
“Leander’s and Mahesh’s are big shoes to fill,” said Nandan Bal, former India coach and now a selector.
“Rohan has come the closest. We tried him with Leander, but they don’t combine well. There is a personality clash too. A generation is over. We are expected to struggle. It will take a couple of years to pick up.”
There is certainly some truth in this. But the feeling is unmistakable that team selection could have been more prudent against Canada.
With Denis Shapovolov in the mix, it was all too obvious that doubles would be the clincher. What we instead saw was Saketh Myneni being drafted into the final four after having played a paltry 12 sets since January.
There is always the option of changing a nomination till an hour before the draw and India exercised it to drop Myneni in favour of Purav. But it is difficult to fathom that a player who was eventually deemed “a few weeks away from playing a five-set match” was selected at all.
Curiously, after the doubles rubber, Bhupathi was wholesome in his praise of the 45-year-old Nestor.
“He’s played 50 Davis Cup matches and that’s why at 5-all, 30-all in the second set he served an ace,” he said. Fans could be forgiven if they had chosen to juxtapose Nestor and Paes.
We may never know if Paes would have helped India win. But when selection is often clouded by factors beyond the court it does result in a muddle. The end result is the terrible mess doubles finds itself in.
