Indian Davis Cup team captain Rohit Rajpal has said that the Indian team’s camp has started from Thursday. All the players are in good shape and all are fit. It is our endeavor that these players get a good practice on the grass court of Delhi Gymkhana. These players have been participating in Maharashtra Open in Pune and Bengaluru Open and a tournament in Adelaide in the past and after that they have reached here via Dubai. Although they did not get a chance to play on grass in all these events, but now this camp is like the last preparation before the exam. The Indian team has to play the Davis Cup Group 1 play off match against Denmark on March 4 and 5.
Rohit himself has also been a Davis Cup player. He said that in the camp organised in Delhi, the players would get a good opportunity to test their preparations. These days we are practicing on the court of Delhi Gymkhana. We are trying to get accustomed to the conditions. This will also give us a sense of how the grass court is behaving out here and what kind of strategy we have to prepare accordingly.
Denmark’s top player Holger Rune withdrew from this tie recently. In this regard, Rohit said that he is the highest ranked player in both the teams but it is not appropriate to take a sigh of relief because of his non-participation. Such thinking is also not right for a player. This is a negative thinking. We would try our hundred per cent to win even in his presence and I am sure our teammates also will not let us down. However, despite this, we are not taking Denmark’s challenge lightly. He has in his team the best doubles player Friedrich Nielsen, who won the doubles title of Wimbledon many years ago. Obviously he is a great player on the grass court.
His ability to play on the grass is amazing and I believe that this time we can see a lot of competition in doubles as our Rohan Bopanna is also second to none. Given Nielsen’s ability to play on the grass, it is possible that he may be fielded in not just doubles but also singles, which will be very challenging.
Rohit says that today very few tournaments take place around the world on grass. Apart from Wimbledon, only three-four tournaments around the world are now on the grass. The captain and coach of any host team has the right to decide on which surface they want to play keeping in mind the interests of the team. We have grown up playing on the grass. Our strategy was to give our players a chance to participate in as many tournaments as possible before the Davis Cup, to keep them in good shape, and then to make the most of the conditions at the camp. Despite all this, I agree that we have a tough match against Denmark but India is the favourite because we will get the advantage of our conditions and surface.
The last two years have been very challenging because of covid. Regarding this, Rohit Rajpal said that during this time everyone’s ranking also went down. Our players didn’t get a chance to play tournaments even though there were still some tournaments going on in Europe during that time. This lack of practice proved costly for us against Finland. Secondly, even luck did not favour us.
Regarding the match against Croatia, he said that Croatia is a three-time champion team. I am glad that our players gave them a tough challenge. Even Ram kumar Ramanathan had two set points but we were unlucky that we lost that tie. Rohit said that we learned a big lesson from India’s defeat in those two matches. We will try not to repeat those mistakes this time.