The Sports-India Community

arjun2761 wrote:Mastercard can buy a lot of things but these vignettes from PKB are priceless...

I wholeheartedly second this comment by arjun on Shri PKB's posts!

I recall that Sumant Mishra used to appear as a DD commentator for Challenger tournaments around 1990-91.

Davis Cup commentary teams used to have Ravi Katpalia and Atul Premnarayan, with Naresh Kumar often as the expert commentator, till he became non-playing captain.

hi, pkbasu
i see u have really good knowledge about all the old tennis players.i wonder where u get all the info from because i want to get the info about my dad and uncle( bhanu nunna and gopal krishna nunna) wonder if u ever heard of them. and about mr. Gaurav misra and bidyuth goswami,they are close friends of my uncle and they live in New York right now.Bidyuth teaches for the Columbia university team. Hope this information is usefull to u .please feed back


thank you
Rajiv Nunna

Hi Rajiv Nunna. It is so wonderfully exciting to hear from Bhanu Nunna's nephew! I remember your uncle making the final of the Indian Open (full ATP tour event) doubles in 1976. But the first time I read his name was when trying to find information about Indians playing at Wimbledon in 1974 or 1975, when I found his name among those playing the qualifying rounds. I must say that was the first time I came across his name (written in that way): I was 10 years old in 1974! But then later, I realized he was the same person we knew as Nunna Bhanumurthy from the domestic tennis circuit. (There is an N Bhanumurthy who is an economist at the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi; for awhile I thought he may be the same person as your uncle, but on further checking, he turned out to be someone else!).

I suppose I have just been an Indian tennis nut since I was about 9 or 10 years old, and hearing about former Wimbledon champions like Mal Anderson playing in Delhi (at the Indian Open, 1973) and losing to a young Indian player called Vijay Amritraj just fired my young imagination. The notion of Ramanathan Krishnan making two Wimbledon SFs sounded so remarkable too, and I really got "into" tennis at a young age (although, sadly, I was never really good enough to play it beyond the district level myself!). I've found kindred spirits here in this forum, who remember the likes of Royappa, Elangovan, Ilyas Ghouse, Nandan Bal, Bhanu Nunna, Chiradeep Mukherjea, Ashok Amritraj, S Vasudevan, et al -- apart from those (like Krish, Jaideep Mukherjea, Premjit Lall, Naresh Kumar, Vijay and Anand Amritraj, Ramesh Krishnan, Sashi Menon, Jasjit Singh and Leander Paes who actually made it to the top-100 in singles and/or played singles regularly at the Slams).

Your uncle, Bhanu Nunna, made it to a career-high of #199 in the ATP singles rankings 24 years ago (June 1976) -- a better ranking than, say, Mahesh Bhupathi ever achieved in singles. In those days, there were no doubles rankings, but he may well have been inside the top-100 in doubles had rankings existed. He played in the doubles main draw of the French Open in 1979 (with Ramesh Krishnan as his partner) and the Wimbledon doubles main draw in 1977 with Chiradeep Mukherjea. (Ironically, he lost on both occasions to an Aussie pair including Phil Dent -- current pro Taylor Dent's dad).

hi, thanks for the reply.
respect ur knowledge sir.
keep the thread going.
peace out.

HiRajiv,
i first saw your uncles Bhanumurthy, Srinivasan and Gopal krishna when they were young boys and came to Cuddapah, Rayalaseema, Andhra Pradesh, in 1972 when Bhanu lost to Srnivasan in the finals at the age of 16. i think Bhanu's father was N.Rama Rao, SE of electricity board. My father who was famour player in Rayalaseema at that time lost to Bhanumurthy in the semi-finals. i was 10years old.

ippenta62, welcome to the forum! And please tell us more about your dad (his name, for instance, and how much longer he played on the domestic circuit).

As for Rajiv's other question: sorry for the late response. But I do remember Gaurav Misra and Bidyut Goswami as being titans of the domestic tennis circuit in the 1970s. Gaurav Misra played in the main draw of Wimbledon (both singles and doubles) in 1973, and also played at Newport. He lost in straight sets in R1 of singles (to a Czech player in the top 100, Vladimir Zednik) but in doubles (with Chiradeep Mukerjea), he won a set before going down to a Japanese pair in four close sets (including a tiebreaker in the fourth set). At the Indian Open that year, Gaurav beat a New Zealand Davis Cupper, Jeff Simpson (ranked in the 70s) before losing in R2 to Paul Gerken (then ranked in the 30s). Based on this, I think Gaurav Misra reached a career high ranking of around 158, but the ATP may have messed up his records (as they have another Misra with that ranking, but a blank for Gaurav Misra's career high ranking).

Bidyut Goswami had a career high ranking of 318, which he reached in 1974. That year he lost to Anand Amritraj in straight sets in the Indian Open singles, but made R2 in doubles (with Chiradeep Mukerjea, who was definitely the India #3 at the time after the Amritraj brothers). In the Indian Open of 1973, however, Bidyut Goswami took then #21 Brian Gottfried to a tiebreak in the first set of their R1 match. Gottfried rose to #3 in singles four years later...

PK,

My Dad was famous locally in Rayalaseema area in AP where he was undisputed chamipon of Rayalaseema for many years. he went on to represent AP in veterans in the senior nationals. His name is I.W.CAREY. He lost to Bhanu. He have a good fight to CK Bhupathy also at the All india hrad court championships held in Anantapur in 1976. Ramanathan Krishan won this where beat S.Vasudevan. I played in the All India hard at Cuddapah in 1983 where i lost to to the well known AP player Umameheshar Rao. J.Royappa won this event. i think he beat S. Narendranath (may be i am wrong).

Yesterday i had an opputunity to meet Zeeshan Ali as we have invited him to open our Tennis tournment in Abu dhabi. we spent about 3hrs together and we are looking to use his servcies for coaching the indian community in Abu Dhabi in UAE. It surprises me how he was not given the Arjuna Awrd in 2002 when it was awarded to Sandeep Kirtane. Zeeshan was the coach of UAE Davis cup team. He looked in good shape.

ippenta, I am not sure why your latest couple of posts were queued up for approval by us moderators. Usually after the first post (when we check it to make sure that it is not a spammer), there is no approval needed. Anyway, sorry that the post appeared a bit late, after waiting for us to notice.. Mod, Jay.

PKBasu wrote:Hi Rajiv Nunna. It is so wonderfully exciting to hear from Bhanu Nunna's nephew! I remember your uncle making the final of the Indian Open (full ATP tour event) doubles in 1976. But the first time I read his name was when trying to find information about Indians playing at Wimbledon in 1974 or 1975, when I found his name among those playing the qualifying rounds. I must say that was the first time I came across his name (written in that way): I was 10 years old in 1974! But then later, I realized he was the same person we knew as Nunna Bhanumurthy from the domestic tennis circuit. (There is an N Bhanumurthy who is an economist at the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi; for awhile I thought he may be the same person as your uncle, but on further checking, he turned out to be someone else!).

I suppose I have just been an Indian tennis nut since I was about 9 or 10 years old, and hearing about former Wimbledon champions like Mal Anderson playing in Delhi (at the Indian Open, 1973) and losing to a young Indian player called Vijay Amritraj just fired my young imagination. The notion of Ramanathan Krishnan making two Wimbledon SFs sounded so remarkable too, and I really got "into" tennis at a young age (although, sadly, I was never really good enough to play it beyond the district level myself!). I've found kindred spirits here in this forum, who remember the likes of Royappa, Elangovan, Ilyas Ghouse, Nandan Bal, Bhanu Nunna, Chiradeep Mukherjea, Ashok Amritraj, S Vasudevan, et al -- apart from those (like Krish, Jaideep Mukherjea, Premjit Lall, Naresh Kumar, Vijay and Anand Amritraj, Ramesh Krishnan, Sashi Menon, Jasjit Singh and Leander Paes who actually made it to the top-100 in singles and/or played singles regularly at the Slams).

Hi Rajiv Nunna,
Your father and nephew studied with me way back in the 60s in Railway School at Tarnaka when we were all 12 years. Have been to my house many a time. Look forward to getting in touch with them.
Ravi Swaminathan

ippenta62 wrote:PK,

My Dad was famous locally in Rayalaseema area in AP where he was undisputed chamipon of Rayalaseema for many years. he went on to represent AP in veterans in the senior nationals. His name is I.W.CAREY. He lost to Bhanu. He have a good fight to CK Bhupathy also at the All india hrad court championships held in Anantapur in 1976. Ramanathan Krishan won this where beat S.Vasudevan. I played in the All India hard at Cuddapah in 1983 where i lost to to the well known AP player Umameheshar Rao. J.Royappa won this event. i think he beat S. Narendranath (may be i am wrong).

Hi, sorry for the late reply. Actually uma maheshwar rao is a really good friend of my dad. I will ask Bhanu if he remembers playing your dad. Take care.

Ravi wrote:

PKBasu wrote:Hi Rajiv Nunna. It is so wonderfully exciting to hear from Bhanu Nunna's nephew! I remember your uncle making the final of the Indian Open (full ATP tour event) doubles in 1976. But the first time I read his name was when trying to find information about Indians playing at Wimbledon in 1974 or 1975, when I found his name among those playing the qualifying rounds. I must say that was the first time I came across his name (written in that way): I was 10 years old in 1974! But then later, I realized he was the same person we knew as Nunna Bhanumurthy from the domestic tennis circuit. (There is an N Bhanumurthy who is an economist at the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi; for awhile I thought he may be the same person as your uncle, but on further checking, he turned out to be someone else!).

I suppose I have just been an Indian tennis nut since I was about 9 or 10 years old, and hearing about former Wimbledon champions like Mal Anderson playing in Delhi (at the Indian Open, 1973) and losing to a young Indian player called Vijay Amritraj just fired my young imagination. The notion of Ramanathan Krishnan making two Wimbledon SFs sounded so remarkable too, and I really got "into" tennis at a young age (although, sadly, I was never really good enough to play it beyond the district level myself!). I've found kindred spirits here in this forum, who remember the likes of Royappa, Elangovan, Ilyas Ghouse, Nandan Bal, Bhanu Nunna, Chiradeep Mukherjea, Ashok Amritraj, S Vasudevan, et al -- apart from those (like Krish, Jaideep Mukherjea, Premjit Lall, Naresh Kumar, Vijay and Anand Amritraj, Ramesh Krishnan, Sashi Menon, Jasjit Singh and Leander Paes who actually made it to the top-100 in singles and/or played singles regularly at the Slams).

Hi Rajiv Nunna,
Your father and nephew studied with me way back in the 60s in Railway School at Tarnaka when we were all 12 years. Have been to my house many a time. Look forward to getting in touch with them.
Ravi Swaminathan

Hi Ravi , I will ask Bhanu and my dad I they remember you. Best regards

Here's a little vignette about Shiv-Prakash Misra (our current Davis Cup captain). He qualified into the Wimbledon singles main draw in 1964, won a round and took his compatriot Jaidip Mukherjea to five sets in R2. Jaidip went on to make the PQF that year (for the second consecutive year):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Wimbl ... 7s_Singles

The following year, SP Misra lost a 5-setter in R1 to Bob Carmichael, who later went on to coach Rafter, Leander Paes and Lleyton Hewitt. He also made the main draw of singles in 1966, losing a 4-setter to Britain's Cox in R1.