Akhtar Ali
Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 4:34 am
Most of us remember Akhtar Ali as India's national tennis coach, a title he officially held for more than 10 years during the late 1970s and 1980s. He still coaches -- and does the job very well indeed. (One winter a couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of chatting with him while he was conducting a coaching clinic at the club in Calcutta that I'm a member of, Tollygunge). But of course he was also a fine world-class tennis player, albeit one whose achievements were somewhat eclipsed by his three great contemporaries -- Ramanathan Krishnan, Jaidip Mukerjea and Premjit Lall.
As the fourth member of the Davis Cup team, Akhtar Ali only got to play matches very occasionally. But he always rose to the occasion, and had a superb win-loss record of 9-2 in the Davis Cup (and was 2 sets to love up in two unfinished matches, which would have made it 11-2!). Among his victories, was a 5-set win in 1961 over Japan's Osamu Ishiguro (who had a 19-19 record in his DC career, with most of his losses coming to Indians -- apart from one victory over Jaidip in 1963 -- but virtually no losses to any non-Indian Asian! Those were the days for Indian tennis!). And he had a winning 2-1 career record against Pakistan's Zulfiqar Rahim; in fact, Akhtar often got to play against Pakistan -- and won all matches save that one singles loss. He also had a singles win over Monaco in 1958.