Friday, August 5, 2016

London Diaries 8 | The Wimbledon Spectacle.


I have always wondered why Tennis happens to be amongst the most followed sports in India. As barring the Tier 1 cities there is hardly any supporting infrastructure for the sport to flourish. Unlike Cricket, this sport has only a handful of national sporting icons to look forward to. So the only potentially strong reason I could think of is ‘Doordarshan’. In the late 80s and early 90s where television was a luxury and present day bouquet of channels a distant reality, Doordarshan was the only source of entertainment. And of the many classics that Doordarshan telecasted, Wimbledon and French Open were the two annual sporting events that the channel broadcasted. This not only enlightened the nation about the nuances of this beautiful sport but also made the likes of Lendls, Mc Enroes, Couriers, Navratilova, Grafs as the household names and Wimbledon as the mecca of tennis. Ever since it has been a dream to experience this spectacle live on those hallowed lawns.

And the opportunity presented itself when I relocated to London 2 years back. But it isn’t easy to get tickets for the annual Championships as you have to either go for the lottery/ballot route which opens the year before in September with lucky draws out in Feb/Mar or you queue up with a hundred thousands more from 2 AM in the morning for the day pass/ticket. While the latter wasn’t a possibility, hard luck prevailed in the former and Wimbledon 2016 also seemed to be an improbable proposition.  But interestingly as the championships started, week 1 was marred by rains, with lot of matches piled up for week 2. I was Cognizant of the fact that middle Sunday is the rest day and only 4 times in over 100 years has there been play on the middle Sunday. So with such massive disruption in play, the possibility of play on this year’s Middle Sunday was ripe. My constant vigil on their official website helped, as they announced late Friday evening that there will be play on this year’s Middle Sunday to accommodate for all the pending matches for the week and the tickets will be sold online next day at 1PM. I was all gung-ho  from 1230 to not miss this golden chance to grab a pair of tickets but there was another delay and the ticket sale started only at 3PM. And by 3.02 PM whole of Centre Court was gone, thankfully I got the Court 1 tickets which also gave me access to watch matches on all other courts, and the feeling was akin to getting 99 percentile in CAT J.

Then, began the quest for the partner to accompany me on ‘THE’ day. Family couldn’t go as kids under 5 are not allowed in the show courts, so much for that coveted decorum. I called up few friends, most busy with their late Saturday afternoon nap missed the call, one answered and got lucky to live the dream of being in attendance at the Championships. There were some hush-hush calls between two of us in preparation for the most anticipated day in a long-long time, we were both apprehensive about the attire we have to wear to gain access – formals or whites was the dilemma. Thankfully, the official website confirmed that there are no such restrictions for the spectators at least and if we have the tickets we are the Kings of the Wimbledon for the day J.

On the morning of the match day, the euphoria was at its pinnacle, the moment we entered the premises we were awestruck, eyes and mouth both wide opened. There was still sometime for the start of play, so we decided to do a tour of the Centre Court, the arena that has been the host to so many epic battles. Our tickets didn’t allow us to enter the centre court but on some typical Indian persuasion the gate guards agreed to let us in to have a view and click some photographs. We made the most of it and spent almost half an hour inside, soaking in the magnanimity of the place.  While we came out of the Centre Court, there was still some time to the start of play so we planned to meander around the practise courts in the anticipation of bumping into few tennis stars. And to our good fortune, we managed to see the likes of Serena, Kuznetsova, Stephens, Del Potro practising in full flow just yards away from us, giving us a clear idea on what goes behind those stellar performances on the court. It was a real treat to watch these stars prepare for their matches.

As the day began, we kept hoping from one court to the other catching up on the key moments of all the in-play matches. The key matches that we watched were Kuznetsova vs Stephens tight 3 setter, Kyrgios vs Lopez, battle of the serves, Vesely upsetting Sousa in 3 straight sets but the highlight of all these single matches was the Isner Vs Tsonga epic 5 setter that was as breath taking as the final score line read 7/6 6/3 6/7 2/6 17/19. It was a real humdinger with neither of the players willing to relent. I so wished to watch either of Federer or Djokovic in action, but the former had a day off and latter had already suffered a shocking exit a day before. But 2 matches that we were eyeing right from the time we saw the order of play were ladies double match featuring Sania and Hingis and men’s doubles duel involving the legendary Leander Paes. Now the early round matches of both men’s and ladies doubles don’t happen on the show courts rather they are being played on the open courts which are placed one besides the rather. This gave us the opportunity to watch both these Indian icons from an arms distance, though Paes and his partner crashed out with a dismal straight 2 set loss to there much younger and agile opponents, Sania and Hingis literally steam rolled there Japanese rivals. Nonetheless, it was a real proud moment watching our Indian heroes live in action.

The day couldn’t have been more busy, remarkable and breath taking. It lived up to its billing and the age long wait. However, two things stood out that day, one was my friend identifying Serena’s mother meandering outside Center Court, possibly coming out of Serena’s match and switching courts to see Venus in action. He rushed up to her, requesting for a selfie and she replied back with the most dramatic response possible, ‘Really’ (she said, surprised by the fact that he is keen to get clicked with her too J ). Yes he said, and we became a part of the most unusual selfie of our livesJ. Second was with Leander, he was visibly upset post his surprise 2nd round loss and as he came out of the court he was mobbed by the Indian diaspora for photographs and autographs. He kindly obliged all the fans but I missed out on the photo op as I was too far behind. As he moved ahead with his escort, I ran behind him for a potential selfie with the superstar, his escort came to the rescue and sternly warned me to back off. But to the true gentleman that Leander is, he held the escort back and told me ‘come on in, click it fast’. That was enough for me to get bowled over by him for life, not for his game but for his humility this time, true gentleman indeed.

It was a satiating day, couldn’t have asked for a better outing. The tagline of the championship reads IN PURSUIT of GREATNESS, and while you spend your time there you could actually relate to this tagline. There is something special, something extraordinary about the entire setting, something that makes you fall in love with the place and the event forever. I wish I keep getting more and more chances to witness this spectacle and get enchanted by this phenomena all over again, preferably with a bit of Federer in live action too J.

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kin…

Post Script – Live cricket in Lords, CHECK. Live premier league game at Emirates Stadium, Arsenal, CHECK. Live tennis at Wimbledon, CHECK. What next? Possibly Ind v Pak, Champion Trophy match at Kia Oval next year J.










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