They were a crack pair on court, but their off-court differences made as much news. After so many years, Leander Paes finds it irrelevant to dissect what went wrong between him and Mahesh Bhupathi.
“Mahesh [Bhupathi] and I are two completely different people — we function differently, we do our business differently, we conduct our friendships differently, we do things our own way...
“I am not going to tell you who is right or who is wrong, because neither of us are right or wrong,” Paes said at the Tata Literature Live session on ‘How to win an Olympic medal’.
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“We just have our own styles, but we respect each other for what we have achieved as individuals and that will always be there. From my side, I know 100 per cent that I respect that man for what I have created with him,” said Paes.
“I had mentioned to him in 1990, when I was playing in the junior Wimbledon tournament that we could be world-beaters together. He laughed it off because he wasn’t even in the main draw for the juniors. We were sharing a room then.
Recalling the triumph in the 1999 Wimbledon final, Paes said: “After winning match-point, when I looked at him (Mahesh), you should have seen the difference in our faces. One kid (me) who knew all along that this was his life’s journey and he had just achieved it... the other kid (Mahesh) looking like ‘what the hell have we just done.”’
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