Long live Federer-Nadal rivalry & its fan fallout

Sporting rivalries live in a world of their own. It is a world where there are no boundaries, where the fan mails can come from far removed, almost mystical lands with no connection whatsoever with either the sport or the sportspersons as such. It is a world of hyperactivity, of loud altercations among rival supporters, of verbal fisticuffing in the form of tweets and Facebook entries — some woeful, some angry, some laudatory and some downright abusive — considering which icon upped or downed you as per your camp loyalty.

Take the case of the Thursday (January 26, 2012) blockbuster from the Australian Open. Eternal rivals, though somewhat aged on both sides of the net, were facing each other in a grand slam event for the first time after 2009. So, it was only expected that not just tennis icon Roger Federer and tennis ace Rafael Nadal would be in the throes of energy, but also their supporters from all across the world.

Though I work hard at maintaining team spirit in my departments, there was nothing I could have possibly done to dent the deep vertical divide among my colleagues over this one match. It was a rapid fire, close to ugly situation between fans of the sour faced Spaniard on one side and those of the eternal cool dude from Swiss climes on the other.

It is actually mortifying to see how little was needed among these followers to plummet into downright battles — one particular fan even suggested that Roger Federer had lost only because he had dared to dent the ego of Nadal by taking the first set! Clearly, this fight is an extremely personal one among the fans too, so much so that Federer himself was constrained to say that his followers need not feel too bad for him!

Come to think of it, and considering that neither Federer nor Nadal have India on their radar — not now and most probably not even when they have retired — so it is amusing to see how they can still fuel such explosive passions on a mass scale here. They might be surprised to know that the two are virtual folklore among the sports buff in this part of the world.

Coming to the semifinal match itself, it was a scintillating, heart-stopping 4.5 hour session of high grade tennis that evening, taking away from the Indian woes spilling out of Adelaide on Australia Day. Clearly, World No 3 Roger Federer was pitching for a huge battle of the season for him — a battle which he lost to a particular Rafa chemical locha in his mind.

Playing like a champion in the first set, he started losing it from the second onwards. Even his most wantonly unreasonable fans like me could not defend his 60 unforced errors through the entire contest in which Nadal, the eternal fighter, pushed, elbowed and edged out his personal icon with as much doggedness as he did with excellence.

Even commentator Vijay Amritraj, clearly a Federer follower, was compelled to acknowledge the celestial reach of the Spaniard who has made it his singular agenda to fight tooth and nail for every little point which may or may not matter. And when it is against Federer, he throws up an impregnability that is reserved only for the special all-time great.

At Melbourne too, his two cross court passes, which did Federer in for good, can’t be humanly explained. The way he turned Federer’s sure shot winners into his own may still not convert a Federer fan into his, but they did force one and all to acknowledge the extraordinary brilliance of this diminutive player who persists with his hand in the butt problem with as much elan as he does with his divine hold of the game.

Where rivalries go, this one between Federer and Nadal goes up all the way to the top with Borg-McEnroe, Agassi-Sampras, Navratilova-Chris Evert-Llyod following suit. Definitely, the sport will be far less steamy if such iconic rivalries and titanic clashes did not dot the generations of tennis.

So long live Federer and long live his dream to down Nadal, because soon the canvas will be taken over by the Djoker and his age.

RIP Nikhat

The Times of India movie reviews will never be the same again, now that the newspaper’s veteran film critic Nikhat Kazmi is no more. We saw her battle cancer (not many knew she was battling death) without making a hue and cry about it and we saw her wither away too. But Nikhat’s passion for cinema never shrunk, not even in her death. One of the most moving images one has of her is being carried in the arms of her husband into movie preview show just a week before she passed away.

She would sit silently, even sometimes listlessly due to her grown cancer, on the corner most sofa and watch the film for her next verdict. Her star rating for all films was watched intently by film-makers and actors — even those cynical about film critics and their critiques. Those stars Nikhat gave were said to make or break a film as her readers almost always took her to be gospel on movie reviews.

One cannot deny the fact that Nikhat’s passion for cinema was as intense as her knowledge of it. People may not have liked her too much because she came across as haughty, and also because working for a banner like The Times of India, she had special privileges like being flown to Mumbai for red carpet premiers and solo Press shows organised for her alone. But the fact is that she, her keen film assessments, her hold on humour, her knowledge of cinema, her hold over the language and her deep insights into film-making were unrivaled and will be sorely missed.

Published in The Sunday Pioneer, 29 January, 2012