Advantage India: The Story of Indian Tennis

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Tennis, established as a competitive sport in England in the late nineteenth century, quickly caught the Indian imagination. In those early years, Mohammed Sleem, the Fyzee brothers, S.M. Jacob and Ghaus Mohammad (whose genius was sadly curtailed by the Second World War) were the heroes India needed.

After Independence, a new set of players set the courts ablaze: Dilip Bose, Sumant Misra, Naresh Kumar and the dazzling Ramanathan Krishnan, who remains one of India's biggest icons. In the 1970s and '80s, Vijay Amritraj and Ramesh Krishnan established India as a regular on the international stage, until finally in the mid-1990s, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi earned the country its first Grand Slam titles.

Today, tennis is deeply entrenched in India, with players like Rohan Bopanna and Sania Mirza-the superstar who transformed women's tennis in her country-being huge sporting icons and much sought after for endorsements.

Advantage India is a deeply researched engaging account of the exhilarating journey of Indian tennis, with a special ion on the Doubles game and on men's tennis in India. A must-have every sports lover.

You want to have a coffee with Vijay today?' was the cryptic text 1 received one morning six years ago from Shiraz, an old friend. As far as I knew, Shiraz was in Bangkok where he lived, and I was at work in Singapore. But I did know which Vijay he was referring to.

We had spoken a few days earlier and he had casually mentioned that he was working on a business venture with Vijay Amritraj. It turned out that both were in Singapore that day and Vijay had an hour free between meetings and was happy to say hello if I could make it to the Four Seasons at 3 p.m. 'I'll be there, I replied.

That one hour turned into two and a lifetime of memories.

"This is our second meeting, I told him as we sat down and ordered coffee, 'the first was when I was ten and you ruffled my hair and gave me this at the Madras Gymkhana Club in 1977. Vijay sat there shaking his head as he held my first autograph book open to a page that read: 'Love, Vijay Amritraj. Then he looked up with a smile and to my utter disbelief, recited the exact scores of each match that he had played that year in the Davis Cup tie against Australia.

I knew the scores because it held special significance for me. It had been my first glimpse of international tennis sitting with my father on the temporary bamboo stands at the Gymkhana grounds, listening to him recount the exploits of the legendary Ramanathan Krishnan, seated on the team bench across the court.

It was also the day I had fallen hopelessly in love with the sport that I would only start playing a few years later when we moved to Cochin (now Kochi). There, a close friend, Arun Varadarajan, who had made it to the semi-finals of the junior Nationals that year, insisted I join him on the clay courts of the Lotus Club where he practised. But even then if someone had told me that I would end up writing the story of Indian tennis four decades later, I would have laughed in his face.

Fast forward three decades and four books later. A weekend conversation took place between my editor for Wizards: The Story of Indian Spin Bowling (whose manuscript he has just read for the first time)-Karthik Venkatesh-and myself, and he asked what I wanted to write on next. 'Indian tennis, was my answer. 'But remember, Nadal is not Indian, he teased me, knowing much of my work on tennis until then had been a series of pieces over the years on Rafael Nadal. We laughed and left it at that. A month later, I was at breakfast in Copenhagen and got a call from Karthik. 'Congratulations! You are going to be writing the story of Indian tennis. We will discuss terms when you get back.

And thus began a fascinating roller coaster journey that culminated in the book that you hold today.

I didn't quite realise how daunting a task writing this story was going to be until I immersed myself in the research.