Davis Cup | We have one more match to go, we shouldn’t take it lightly: Ramkumar

Indian Davis Cup team leads 2-0 against Togo, creating a positive atmosphere with strong performances and team unity.

The Indian Davis Cup team looked like a happy place after the host took a 2-0 lead on Day One of its tie against Togo on Saturday with smiles and banter, things missing for a while now from the team’s locker room. And Sasikumar Mukund admitted the players and staff were finally in a good space.

“I feel the drama was always with everything else other than tennis. I don’t think it has anything to do with the result of the tie, it’s about how you keep some people off the Players’ Lounge, which I think Rohit (Rajpal) did well this time. I did not see some faces that you normally see, trying to do things which are not healthy for the team. As long as you do that, I think it’s going to be healthy and at the end of the day, the tennis result, nobody cares. We all are here to give our best effort and you can’t do more than your best,” Mukund quipped.

The matches themselves were easier than anyone anticipated and both Mukund and Ramkumar Ramanathan agreed. “It was a good serve day. What I have been working on the last 10-20 days came good today but it’s still not over. We have one more match to go, so we shouldn’t take it lightly. We have to focus on tomorrow, bring on the same energy and finish this time,” Ramkumar said.

“I was pretty sure if I got the first few games going. I was going to run through. I had complete confidence in my physicality and mental composure. If I had to go on for three hours, I was happy to do it and if I had to play fifty shots for each point, I was ready. I knew he had to play phenomenal tennis to get one point off me,” Mukund added.

Togo captain Ali Agnamba, meanwhile, made no effort to hide his displeasure with his players’ performance. “Definitely not a good day for us, I was hoping for better. I can tell you my guys were a little flat, I don’t know why. We also have one guy with a slight injury but we are not going to make that the centre of our loss today,” he said.

Thomas Setodji, the only ranked player for the visitors, agreed that the difference between the two teams was massive. “To be honest, we don’t compete that much. My last match was our last Davis Cup match in September. And before that I played a couple of matches during the summer. At the level your players play, we have to compete all the time during the year,” he admitted.