vijay amritraj child like statement

Vijay Amritraj, though, could not become a great singles player by moving into top five or winning grand slams during his playing days, nonetheless he has been a successful commentator all these days and always amazes us by his predictions on the outcome of atleast 90% of the matches played between different players. I had a nice respect for him up until yesterday in view of his tennis knowledge and his rhythmic commentary of the game.

The reason why I lost respect for him is because he made a child like statement yesterday on Star sports answering a question posted by one of the tennis’fans during the Australian open 2011. He was asked by a tennis fan if he believed that Rafa was the most modest person ever to have played the game inspite of the success that he had been having in the game of tennis. To this question Vijay affirmatively answered with an emphatic “Yes” and he also bundled the players like Bjorn Borg, Rod Laver, Pat Rafter, etc. in this category of “modesty”, conveniently forgetting the name of Mr.Roger Federer, the best player ever to have played the game. To add more salt to it, he also mentioned that of all the guys who had played the game, Nadal was the modest.

How can Vijay do that? Those who have been watching Roger playing since 2003 when he won his first Wimbledon, incidentally, which also was his first grand slam, by beating Mark Philipposis in the Centre Cour t ,will have more than a thing or two to say about it. If Roger does not belong to that category of modesty then who else can be permitted? See, Roger has won 16 grand slams and has till date 67 titles to his credit. He had almost at one point of his career developed a habit of winning 3 grand slams per annum. He enjoyed the success more than anyone. Yet he played the game fairer than anyone. Never ever you can say that Roger had played the game unfairly.

Roger is not a Nadal or a Djokovic who takes time in delivering the second serve, thereby gaining undue advantage in terms of strength. He, again, is not anyone of the two mentioned by me who yells while hitting every ball enough to distract not only his opponent but also the people playing in the nearer courts. Again he is not the one who looks at his box or family for that matter,  after finishing every point. Neither, he speaks of any person disgracefully by making slanderous statements. I am not saying Nadal is doing this atleast but all I am saying is that Federer, in addition to playing the game fairer, has all the good qualities in the world and so can be rated as one of the modest ever if not the modest.

Nadal looks like one of the modest guys in the game no doubt but in order to judge a person you should assess him in all situations. Federer has had ups and downs in his career since 2003. He was in the state of pinnacle at one point of time beyond the reach of any of his contemporaries playing then. He also went into doldrums during 2008 where he could win only one grand slam and everybody saw him weeping after his loss to Nadal in Aus Open Final 2009. During none of these stages, he had behaved in a dispassionate way or made any disgraceful remarks against anybody. All I saw him do, much to the surprise of all of us, was breaking a racquet in a match against Djokovic as he was unable to control his unforced errors. This is what he has done which can be viewed as something unadvisable if we go through his twelve years of tennis since turning into a professional in 1998.

So if Vijay has to assess Nadal’s modesty he should wait for some time. As the time goes by, when Nadal is pushed down from the altitude that he is in now, at that time we can judge him based on how he handles his frustration or how he tries not to exhibit it. Vijay, instead chose to rate not only Nadal above all of his predecessors but also rated him as the modest.

Thus, I can say that Mr.Vijay, by failing to mention Roger’s name while talking about modest players of the game, has committed a crime. It is a child like answer given by Vijay who was supposed to be one of the greatest followers of the game. Being such a responsible commentator, he should have thought twice before picking Nadal or atleast before ignoring Fedex.