Mahesh Bhupati, Rohit Bopanna, Prakash Amritraj and Karan Rastogi wrote a letter to AITA last week demanding Paes’s removal from the Davis Cup captaincy. They said that the legendary Davis Cupper had taken away from the boys the joy of playing in the Davis Cup.
They were also upset with the fact that India number one, Prakash Amritraj was overlooked initially while Somdev Dev Varman got Paes’s nod in the Davis Cup tie against Uzbekistan. When Amritraj did get his chance, he came to India’s rescue with a grand win. The players also accused Paes of playing easy matches which even the most inexperienced of them could have won.
Rastogi has since made peace with Paes but Bhupati on Thursday maintained his stand of getting a new captain for the Indian Davis Cup team. He told an Indian television channel: “Leander has too much on his plate. He is captain, playing singles and playing doubles. This is too much for anyone to handle. He got a new captain when he wanted one. Now, the boys want a different captain.”
He also felt AITA could have handled the situation better. “When the letter got leaked to the media, nobody from AITA bothered to call the boys. A call to each of the boys would have done it. But nobody called them.”
Bhupati and Paes who once formed a lethal doubles’ pair have been at loggerheads for years now.
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