Indian tennis ace Rohan Bopanna ascended to the World No.1 rank in the men’s doubles event and accentuated his achievement with a first-ever career grand slam title at the recently concluded Australian Open.
Bopanna and doubles partner Matthew Ebden scripted history as they registered a 7-6, 7-5 win over Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori in the summit clash to claim the AO title.
The 43-year-old Australian Open doubles champion shared his opinion on the way forward for Indian tennis in an exclusive with CNN-News18 and urged parents of budding sportsmen to remain patient through their journey.
With the advancing ages of the old guard of Indian tennis, Bopanna said that sport needs inspiration and that the state entities need to ensure that the ingenuity is kept alive. He opined that the federations could take things forward piggybacking on his memorable AO title.
“Yeah, I think Indian tennis, we were losing out. We needed some kind of inspiration," he opined.
“I think sports always need inspiration. No matter which sport I am watching, as long as the athlete’s name is there and it says India, I am fully invested in watching that event. I mean, it’s a proud feeling," he elaborated.
“So, I think in tennis, we needed this. I think it’s a good opportunity now to bring in a nice structure into the system, have a lot of tournaments. I have constantly been saying this and I still feel every state needs to have two tournaments a year. Or at least in each category. I mean girls category, boys category, men, women, whatever it is."
“In each state, if they start encouraging every sport, I think it will make a tremendous difference," he explained.
Bopanna, who claimed the World No.1 ranking and the first title after a quarter century of laborious work, urged parents to be patient with the sporting goals of their wards and not be in a hurry for glory.
“I think my biggest thing for them, is not to be in a hurry," he asserted.
“One of the reasons I say that is because say tomorrow, your kid wants to become a doctor or an engineer, you go through the process. You go through the process of starting them from kindergarten, then you go to first, second, third etc. And that means it’s taken that long to become a successful person in that field," he explained.
“Similarly, in sports, it is the same structure," he said.
He drew parallels between sport and the nation’s education system and urged the parents of budding sportsmen to move through the gears instead in a patient manner.
“We are just in a hurry to make them champions quickly. And that’s what we are constantly saying, ‘OK in two months he’s done this’. What’s the next two months? He has to do this, in another two months, he has to do that. Or we join an academy and if in two months there’s no results, the parent takes that kid out and puts him in another academy. But we never do it for school. We don’t change academies or don’t change coaches in one year. We don’t go to two, or three places."
He also urged the parents to trust the coaches as they would trust teachers in schools.
“And the other thing I tell parents is if you send your kid to whatever academy, you need to trust the coaches. You can’t go outside on the fence and just hang around on the fence and start coaching the kid," he said.
“I ask them, have you ever gone to a classroom and asked the teacher what to do? No parent has ever done that. They just enrol the kid in that school and they trust the teacher to teach them in that journey," he explained.
“Similarly, in sport, it’s a process. It takes time, but you’ve got to trust the process. And that is unfortunately something we are still learning and we are still trying to understand. And I think when that happens, I think we’ll see a major difference in the attitude of the kids, the attitude of the parents, everything," Bopanna said.
“It took me a good 20-plus years to get to number one in the world. So I definitely can say I trusted that process," he asserted.
Comments
0 comment