Quick shout-out for a tennis novel

Anyone who has covered the books beat for years knows that most Indian novels — whether classified as literary or genre — are expected to have a “peg” or “hook”, something that helps label them and market them to a swathe of readers; if you’re writing a novel with a sports setting, for instance, the sport should preferably be cricket. (Further, the jacket description should emphasize that the book isn’t “just” about cricket - that it has broader concerns.) Sriram Subramanian’s Centre Court came as a breath of fresh air because here is a well-paced Indian novel that maintains an unwavering focus on a non-cricket sport, with a plot as no-frills as this: a tennis player named Shankar Mahadevan, ranked 41, finds himself winning one match after another in the Wimbledon main draw, contending with the many faces of those twin imposters Success and Failure along the way.

And because there are in-depth descriptions — mostly in Shankar’s own voice — of each match as it unfolds, the press conferences that follow, the physical and psychological challenges, the sideshows that an underdog must deal with over the course of a fortnight-long tournament, this really is a SPORTS NOVEL in the truest sense. Full of little observations and minutiae about the workings of tennis from the junior levels through Challenges and Futures, all the way to the top echelons of the pro circuit. Which also means that though it’s a page-turner, and though it touches on Shankar’s personal relationships (including that with his father Ananth, who narrates parts of the story), I’m not sure how much appeal the book will have for a reader who has zero interest in sport. I enjoyed it very much though.

P.S. I have written earlier about my serendipitous meeting with the author at the Guwahati lit-fest — many years after we had cordial arguments on a tennis messageboard. Here’s the post.