Forget the West Indies, lets move to Roland Garros

2007 is one year Indian cricket fans wouldn't like to remember. I dont know if theres any consolation in winning the up-coming Indo-Bangladesh tour or if it'll mitigate the seething anger of a defeated game-loving nation but I am sure it'll take more than a world cup defeat to remove cricket craze from India. But why brood upon the Port of Spain shocker, lets move on to the more exciting world of clay, tennis and an interesting rivalry.

The comfort of watching a game in which ur home country isnt a strong contender is that u can enjoy the 'good' game irrespective of patriotic loyalty. You can support the top-notch player and feel good about victory, that is a mirage in ur home game such as cricket. I'll stop bashing the cricket devotion here and talk about what I love to watch - tennis. Some people say its getting boring - monotonous would be a better word. Even Federer fans are waiting for an upset for a change (this doesnt include me). I am game for perfection and luckily for me, perfection doesnt get prosaic ever. What would have been humdrum is if one was winning by the sheer incompetency of other contestants but with Roger, that is not so. What works for him is his own impeccable play more than the lack of talent on other side of the net. It is true that he is far ahead of any of the other players and that it would have been good if he had stronger rivals. But by saying this, are we not just admitting how fantastic he is?
What makes Roland Garros special is that it promises more struggle for Fed'ex' than rest of the grand slams. And that is precisely the reason I am looking fwd to see the otherwise 'lesser' interesting championship. I lost my interest in this event since Pete Sampras never advanced beyond 2nd round (apart from 3 QF n 1 SF) through-out his career. To watch him play has been one of the simple pleasures of life. If he couldn't play on clay, I lost interest in the brown surface without any other consideration. What I haven't yet understood is that why only men players have this clay fear; most of the great ladies players have been able to achieve the dominance uniformly on all the surfaces..be it Navratilova or Graf or Seles or Hardenne. Agassi has been the exception in men but somehow I never think of him as legend on the same level as Sampras or Federer. So, to see a man coming up strongly on clay after his grass forte is very interesting.

Nadal is the answer of prayers of people who cant stand Fed's praises (for what weird reasons, I've no idea!). He has provided the only considerable challenge to the Swiss genius in past 3-4 yrs. While he is the eccentric one and crowd finds him more colorful than the 'keep it simple and straight' swiss, I think its merely the variety in the winners list that crowd is longing for. I mean how boring is it to see the same name in front of all grandslams in the winners' list. He has already broken siginificant no. of records and is heading consistently to make more than he breaks. 2007 might be the year of having a uniform winner for all the 4 major championships but what I would like to see is a good, hard-to-win match. I think we can rely on Nadal for that. The action begins 27th May. If last finale is any indication, we can look forward to a killer match since Fed is improving relentlessly and Nadal isn't going to give up the clay so easily.