 "Roger Federer")
If you were invited to partner one of the greatest tennis players ever, would you say yes? Many people would, but imagine also that you are on court before more than 10,000 raucous fans and you are woefully out of practice. That was the predicament Aamir Khan found himself in on Monday at the Coca-Cola International Premier Tennis League. After Novak Djokovic won the toss and picked Sania Mirza, one of the world's best doubles players, Roger Federer said he would partner "the man" (it wasn't clear the organisers had introduced them properly) and gamely joked that Khan's large muscles would help.
If it were a film set, Khan would have been instantly rejected as wrong for the part: the gym regimen he has followed for his upcoming film, PK, has made him look like a misshapen wrestler and his gruesome capri pants would have had him ejected from Wimbledon. (Ditto Deepika Padukone for her bizarre black leotards). Khan's warm-up routine consisted of waving his arms in windmill fashion and then touching his toes once. His first forehand found the bottom of the net. Another was hit so far out of court that it must have been aimed at a spectator. A third again found the bottom of the net. "That forehand's not quite working for Aamir," one Star Sports commentator genially observed. "The biceps might just be too big to get the forehand across," said the other.
By this point, Khan appeared to be suffering not just from a deficit in tennis talent but also from extreme stage fright. Undaunted, the TV commentators reminded us that he had been a Maharashtra state champion before his father asked him at 14 to give up tennis for his studies. This loss to India's Davis Cup prospects was thankfully not announced on the public address system for if it had been, the IPTL organisers exhortations to the crowd - "Delhi make some noise" - would have been even more redundant. The gales of laughter might have blown the roof of the stadium away.
After that dreadful start, Khan hit a decent backhand volley, then a good forehand and he appeared to be finding his form. The TV commentators turned hopeful. But, he almost immediately missed a backhand volley when he was so close to the net that he was almost touching it. The laws of physics suggested the ball would have to drop on his opponent's side but Khan's vicious underspin had other plans.
And on it went for six minutes that felt like an hour. Finally, it was Khan's turn to serve. His first serve looked like it was aimed at the wrong service box - or at Djokovic. He tried again, and again and again… the ball just would not go over. Just when it seemed cruel to be watching, Federer showed his own comic side by deciding on an even more aggressive position at the net. He crouched at the service T. This put him directly in the line of fire of Khan who had nearly hit Federer with a backhand just a point or two earlier. While Federer's legion of fans in India gasped at the looming ignominy of the legend being injured on Indian soil, the champion wisely protected his back with his racket, turned towards Khan. The always gutsy Mirza followed suit, covering her face. Djokovic and Federer encouraged the crowd to clap to help Khan get that serve over.
I watched the 'highlights' on the Star Sports website but friends who attended tell me the world number 1 and 2 sat on the net in desperation to bring it down a few inches so Khan could get the ball over. It was an "embarrassing" spectacle, said a friend lucky enough to be there. "Disrespectful" to the world's number 1 and 2 to be force-fed an obligatory dose of Bollywood, including the unattractive Riteish Deshmukh, harrumphed a sports-writing colleague. I can see why they think so, but they overlook that Khan's appeal on film and on Satyamev Jayate is largely because he seems like the guy next door.
As the teacher in Taare Zameen Par and as the anchor on his inspiring TV show, where Khan can sometimes be seen tearing up, his calling card is empathy. On court with Federer, he gave us amateur tennis players a brilliant evocation of a day - we've all had them - when everything goes wrong: when we are afflicted by the tennis equivalent of hand-eye coordination dyslexia, when our muscle-bound limbs freeze as if they were cast in cement and even a partner as encouraging as Federer can't lift us out of the morass. It made me cringe, it made me laugh, it made me salute Khan's courage. It was the performance of a lifetime. It just seemed blasphemous to make Federer watch it.
