They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by suresh »

VReddy wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 5:18 pm personally I see ITD as a social media window of our forum.
I agree.
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by VReddy »

Long post, so watch out. Glad we are having this discussion - I was going to start in December but earlier the better.

Sorry if I came across promoting that page. To call out - There is no doubt in my mind where my roots are from (Jays notes -> Sports India). There is a reason why i used the word 'Window' and not a house or replacement or something absurd like that. A fb page cannot be a replacement to a discussion forum - that platform doesn't allow for continuity of discussion. If that page had a fb community added, then yes, it is a conflict. And additionally, I joined that page only about 3 months ago and would gladly exit if it is seen as a conflict - SI matters to me more (same for Jaydeep and likely Vatsal). Just to ensure Jaydeep is not seen from the same light - he is only there to mentor/bring structure in our discussions - We noticed the page was growing way faster and fortunately/unfortunately - players started following that page. I specifically pushed Vatsal to request Jaydeep for the above - Jaydeep is not active in terms of content there - more as a mentor. So hopefully we won't see Jaydeep in the same angle for this discussion.

I wouldn't discuss on that page myself. Just like prasen said, facebook for me is for a whole lot of something else and given the privacy settings it offers, I wouldn't want all my tennis discussions to show up to my friends / family / co workers / even my managers! Tennis is a more of a personal passion and I would prefer to keep it that way. Additionally, Social media is brittle in terms of its future - facebook as a platform itself is dying for young people - its moving to Instagram -> Snapchat.

Now my motive to make it clear - as I myself would doubt my motive from a 3rd person view given that I have only been a consumer of content but not contributor on this forum -

1. To spread the journey of Indian players beyond the core group of tennis followers (who are not on SI)
2. To spread (1), amongst the younger generation of tennis enthusiasts [Kids are starting on mobile, have lesser attention span. There is a reason why large Corps have moved towards mobile-first world]. If we look at the demographics of our forum - we will understand what I am talking about.
3. As our players participate in events across the various tournaments abroad, wanted a mechanism where the local indian community pages / groups in those countries atleast are aware of our player presence and try to get alteast 3-5 people to cheer for them and publish in their local dailies
[Example: When Ram plays in San Francisco, ensure atleast it gets posted in the social media page of indian tennis player community of san francisco. So reaching out to admins of those fb communities, to post about it there by referencing the ITD post for more info]
4. There are few more I had but can't recollect as of now

Learning so far

1. The audience is way different than I/we had imagined it to be. Lot of the Jr / non-top-3 players are following the page. I noticed the same group tends to follow Kamesh's fb page. So unfortunately, not my/our intention, but if at all one has to call it a competition, its turning out to be competing with Kamesh's page (note: not our forum as the audience is different]
2. There are way more core Indian tennis followers outside of our forum than I had imagined.

Example
I have noticed pings from random places like Jeddah / remote parts of india / manila / etc. to post result of a Leander match or Mukund Sasikumar's match that they have stayed awake and seen at like 2 am their time. In the 3-5 conversations i managed to start with these young people, inspite of telling them about sports-india, they are stuck with showing me the Android / iOS Apps they use to follow Indian Tennis in Junior/future events. This clearly tells me that desktop/forum doesn't come to them as naturally

3. Most of the followers of the page are in the 15-25 yr bucket apart from large section of player parents/coaches

4. There is a huge audience out there (atleast >50k) for Indian Tennis content that this forum generates.

5. It is much easier on a social platform to connect with tournament organizers / players. The players/events have to maintain a presence anyway for their marketing needs.

For example - when I share an update on Nandini Sharma or a Kanika Vaidya from their Portugal / French academies - because those pages get notified, I realize the founder / player themselves start following the page for updates and message us occasionally. Now these are some aspects that we just can't replicate here.

Now my plan was also to check for the following
1. As mentioned before, I have only been a consumer of content but not contributor. So volunteered with vatsal to see if I even do it for atleast 3 months in a structured manner
2. To gain an experience of what it was even like

If above (2) checked out still by end of year, I had mentioned to both Jaydeep / Vatsal in chat, that I/we will start a discussion with Jay (or in this forum as a topic) to see if he would even be open to entertain the topic of social media page/window of our SI forum (note - not a replacement but more as a mechanism for younger generation to get indian tennis news). As Rajiv mentioned, this is bit of plagarism right now, so atleast when I see content which is not there on our forum yet, I do post it here while posting there. Note: I (and i think Vatsal / Jaydeep too) wouldn't have an issue of shutting down that page or rebranding the page if we agree for an SI Tennis Social Media outlet - we all have the same passion / interest :D

Incase a new topic is not started by my evening time, I will do in the misc section of this forum as I am passionate about this topic. Its just that I wanted to start topic after doing it for few months (to feel confident myself) but given that we have this discussion now, it is indeed the right time!

But I wanted to ensure this part about ITD is done with so that we can focus on the merits/demerits of social media presence of SI (Tennis section, other sports might be too broad a scope) and if there is consensus, we can focus on the next steps there.
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by vatsal323 »

Rajiv wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2017 3:25 am
Many a alternatives were floated in the past but none succeeded , but this one I am sceptical of this alternative platform formed by our own guys who in the end are simply plagiarising and taking inputs and ideas from this forum and peddling as their own, which I feel does marginalise our forum , and the one of the promoters is totally quite now and rarely contributes , but comes frequently online to see what is happening , where as in the past not a day passed without any comment from him

This forum is our religious passion and even if I don’t have a FB account , I would gladly have one if SPORTS-INDIA has its own FB page.
Hey Rajiv. Just a polite counter to your points here! :)

1) I started ITD because I felt that the struggles and efforts of our players were not being recognized enough by our media, and that more casual tennis fans/people needed to know about it. I wanted more Indians to turn into hardcore Indian Tennis fans like us out here. And I think the page is slowly doing that.

2) About not being active on the forum - July was around the time when Vishnu offered to help with the page and did promotions, etc. That is when ITD actually had a boom. And July, coincidentally, was about the same time when I started working here at InMobi in Bangalore. Before July, it was a very casual page, with only selected updates made by me whenever I got time.

3) But since July, the pressure and commitment has increased both towards InMobi and ITD. Recently, even Vishnu and Jaydeep would have noticed that I struggle to post my share of updates on ITD. That's because I hardly I get time. I, for one, know that the folks here would remain die-hard Indian fans forever. So all I am trying to do here, in my limited free time, is to try and get more appreciation and following for our own players. And in that endeavor, have not been able to devote enough time to post on SI. But as you rightly said, I do check the forum daily, in the whatever limited time that I have.

I would like to reiterate that SI has played a huge part in igniting and fuelling my passion for Tennis, and would forever be indebted to SI. And if my folks out here think that I am doing something wrong by running ITD on Facebook to help our players gain more recognition, I would be happy to :

a) Refurbish it to Sports India from Indian Tennis Daily
b) Shut down the page all together

Hoping that you guys would share your inputs! :)
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by vatsal323 »

Rajiv wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2017 7:33 am
Omkara wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2017 6:53 am I like this better than FB/Twitter. Much better
Ofcourse this is definitely better :D , and I am surely not against individual choices or preferences , everyone and anyone is free to do whatever one wishes.
I am only concerned that a clear line should be marked between the two and no attempt should be made to forcefully integrate the two outlets so that the boundary lines get blurred , and the guy involved should not resort to plagiarism or borrow the inputs from here to further his or her platform.

Hey Rajiv. Once again just a polite rebuttal :)

Just to make it clear, the page on FB is just a result/interview posting page. It's not a discussion forum. So we don't post any opinions there. We just post results there with a mere picture. So I think you have a slight misunderstanding here. And hence you are bringing in plagiarism, which is not the case at all! :)
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by VReddy »

Hey lets leave out the personal part from this after this - my intention of posting about Laxmi Poruri was totally not that :D :p . Today is one of the best days for us as Indian fans, so hopefully we'll move on to SI Tennis - social media : merits/demerits discussion :)
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by VReddy »

Just posted here - would be good to take it forward : viewtopic.php?f=4&t=219135&p=4388376#p4388376
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by PKBasu »

Sorry I had missed this discussion 3 weeks ago. And I don't follow ITD, although Vishnu, Vatsal and Jaydeep are (relative) youngsters whose contributions to our forum I greatly appreciate and admire. The audience VReddy (Vishnu) talks about is very interesting -- and probably explains why there always are 300-500 people (probably Indians from all over the world) watching the live streaming of Challenger matches involving Indian players.
Sports-india.com pioneered passionate Indian-tennis followership, but I see nothing wrong with key forum members starting a Facebook page to further the goal of spreading the word about Indian tennis.
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by PKBasu »

punarayan wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2017 2:25 am Love to hear what she has to say, about her time on the tour and her formative tennis years. I watched her play at the USO, and she was not well - never knew the reason. A few years later, I had a long chat with her, as we watched an Indian player try to qualify. She was going to teach in New England, and take a shot at writing. I remember telling her that she might write the next Great American Novel! Her lonely travels through the women's tour as told in the New York Times, was heart-breaking. Hope all is well with her.
That novel is on the way, by the way. About 4 young tennis players in an academy, written from the viewpoint of the child prodigy among them...partly (but not entirely) autobiographical.
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by PKBasu »

We hadn't mentioned Akhtar Ali here earlier. Well-known to our generation primarily as the long-standing "national coach" of India (through much of the 1970s and 1980s and into the next decade), Akhtar Ali played Davis Cup for India between 1958 and 1964 with reasonable success -- a 9-2 record, with 4-0 in doubles (mainly partnering Premjit Lall), and singles wins against Pakistan, Malaysia, Japan and Iran (then actually a decent Asian tennis power). His two losses were against Mexico (in an away tie we lost 0-5 in 1962). Akhtar Ali also made the singles second round at Wimbledon in 1956 and 1958, and played in the main draw both at Wimbledon and Roland Garros in 1961 and 1962. His son Zeeshan also played Davis Cup for India, of course, and reached a career-high ranking of 126 on the pro tour.
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by rajitghosh »

Had the opportunity to interact with him. Quite an arrogant person. Thinks he is the best coach in the world. That's why his son failed and Leander succeeded because Leander used to be more busy practising and building his fitness whereas Akhtar and Zeeshan Ali were busy showing off.
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by Omkara »

Zeeshan was a bit over rated. In today's world no way he could have had a 126 rank build on playing Satellites.
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by rajitghosh »

In those days there were regular articles in the press that Zeeshan was better than Vijay Amritraj and Ramesh Krishnan and was not being allowed to play Davis Cup. The irony was he met an ageing Vijay in a Challenger and lost badly.
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by PKBasu »

I don't remember any such articles about Zeeshan, although perhaps I may have missed some because I was at graduate school in the US after 1987 (in the pre-internet era). He was never really capable of being a proper ATP pro, having built his points mainly on the Satellite circuit -- especially one that he dominated in Japan. Couldn't do much at the Challenger level, leave alone ATP tournaments. That 126 ranking proved unsustainable, as he had never beaten any top-100 player. In fact, the highest-ranked player he ever beat was an ageing Leif Sheiras (#140 at the time).

To have reached 126 when he was officially only 18 years old must have been heady. But he never achieved anything remotely like what Sumit Nagal (currently with a live ranking of 129) has achieved, apart from qualifying into the singles main draw at Wimbledon in 1989.
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by Sin Hombre »

Not sure if you guys have seen this site before https://www.ultimatetennisstatistics.com

Great to look up random tennis trivia on a Sunday afternoon :p

Hadn't realized a Pakistani (Haroon Rahim) had won 2 atp titles in the 70s.

Also didn't know that Ramesh Krishnan was a pigeon/turkey again both Lendl and McEnroe with 0-10 records.

Vijay is still alltime Asian #2 behind Nishikori as per their GOAT formulas. No Indian has even registered a point since Paes.
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Re: They flitted briefly upon the tennis world's stage...

Post by rajitghosh »

Good site but doesn't consider the pre-1968 results. So Laver and Rosewall don't feature among GOATs and Vijay Amritraj is the Indian GOAT not Ramanathan Krishnan.
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