Lee-Hesh: Game, set and mismatch

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes have each won 50 ATP tour doubles titles. 25 of these wins have come as partners. They were at the top of their game, and the ATP doubles rankings, in 1999/2000. Oddly enough, that’s when their problems began. Then again, maybe it’s not that odd. Success does, almost without exception, go to the head of most humankind, especially Indian-kind. Come 2003, soon after their rise to the top, Mahesh and Leander split and started seeing other people. Since then, neither has been able to find a settled collaborator to play ball with. Cases in point: Mahesh has had eleven dalliances to show for his strenuous efforts at forging a new combination and Leander eight. Quite clearly, Mahesh and Leander are made for each other and at the very top of their game when they stand shoulder to shoulder. In fact, even when the pair reunited in 2011 (eight long and tumultuous years after being with other people), Mahesh and Leander managed to collaborate their way to three ATP titles and looked pretty damn good together. Pray why can’t they see the light, and eye to eye now? Indians love to yammer on about the need to forgive and forget, but you can be pretty sure we won’t practice what we repeatedly preach. Might it be because we have been persecuted for so long that we can’t let bygones be bygones? [caption id=“attachment_354987” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Come 2003, soon after their rise to the top, Mahesh and Leander split and started seeing other people. AFP”] [/caption] Make no mistake, India’s best shot at winning an Olympic medal in tennis lies with Mahesh and Leander playing together. Obviously, Mahesh, perhaps more than Leander, chooses not to see it that way. Perhaps that might have something to do with the fact that Mahesh has found himself a steadfast ally in Rohan Bopanna and is certain he can outperform Leander at the London Olympics. In all likelihood, Mahesh and Bopanna will top anything Leander and any other Indian can string together. And maybe that matters more than everything else to Mahesh. As far as Mahesh is concerned, a medal for India at the Olympics is not as important as doing better than his old partner Leander. How did things come to such a petty pass? Perhaps Mahesh believes he didn’t get enough credit for all the superb wins and golden moments Paes and he racked up together for India. Oh wait, from the looks of it, those achievements had little to do with India. How foolish of us to think they were doing it for the country. Why do we gullible fans fall for it time and again? Do these players who profess to play for India really play for India? It does seem like they don’t. But this well-concealed fact of life should come as no surprise to Indians who know themselves well. Which makes me wonder, do people all over the world put self-interest over and before all? In my opinion, they don’t. Well, at least, not if they happen to belong to a country that enjoys a high standard of living and low income inequalities. Note to doctoral candidates in the field of social sciences looking for a thesis idea: There’s a topic somewhere in there that might be worth delving into. Brazil, for instance (which in many ways is not very different from India), too, celebrates individual triumphs more than anything else. You can see it in the way they prefer to play their football. Fortunately, they are so good at the ‘beautiful game’ that Brazil manages to come out on top even when they don’t play as a team. Incidentally, incredible skill is also the reason India won all those gold medals in the good old days of Indian hockey. Man-to-man we were just too damn brilliant for the rest of the floundering bunch that was still trying to come to grips with a confounding game dominated, back then, by dazzling stick-work, delicate body feints and short passes. But once the surface changed to Astroturf and it became imperative to combine well as a team in order to win, India completely lost the plot. A bit of research will reveal that countries teeming with poor people tend to nurture citizens that strive to rise above all, often at the cost of others. This has everything to do with the insecurity and need to first think of self that is brought about by a scarcity of resources and rewards. One of the reasons the Indian cricket team fails to consistently excel as a unit is because the guys do not play for each other, or India. This failure to pull together as one hurts the Indian cricket team most in Test matches because in the longest and most testing format of the game individual performances can only win you a day or two and not the war. Mahesh and Leander, too, dominated the circuit only for a year or two of their lives as tennis players. If they really cared for each other, the country and the bigger picture, they would have stayed as ‘Lee-Hesh’ for much longer. Had they done so, Mahesh and Leander might well have ended their careers as one of the greatest doubles teams of all time and in the same league as say Mark Woodforde and Todd Woodbridge, who from 1991 to 2000 won 61 ATP doubles titles as partners, including 11 Majors and one Olympic gold. Speaking of ‘The Woodies,’ is it just a coincidence that Australia is a country with a high standard of living, low income inequalities and a strong team ethic? The writer tweets @Armchairexpert. You can follow him if you’re into that sort of thing.