The Magician

Over the course of the last 18 months that I have been living in the United States Of Ignorant Cricketless America, I have not watched too much live sport action. But a couple of times I have been tempted to buy the package for the live streaming of cricket matches on the WWW. These almost invariably ended in humiliating losses for India, depression on the next day and frustration on a waste of money and time. The one bright spot in this sordid saga however was that the quality of the streaming was excellent.

So I expected that to be the case when last week my tennis-starved self grabbed at the offer for the live streaming of the Dubai Open Men's Tennis Championships. I was wrong. The coverage provided by the well-intentioned ZCam was impossible to watch without distress and at least on the first day it had to buffer after every 5 seconds. This interval is on an average less than the time for a rally in tennis and hence my troubles were compounded. To their credit upon receipt of my complaining email they did apologize and made some sort of improvements on the subsequent days. As a result when it came to the semi-finals I could watch the Agassi-Federer match to an acceptable degree of approximation. Still very fuzzy but it did not buffer every five seconds.

By the end of the match I realised it was worth the effort. Agassi at 34 played excellent tennis and was yet thrashed 63 61 by an absolutely imperious Roger Federer. It reminded me somewhat of the 1999 Wimbledon final where again Agassi played 3 sets of green supreme grass court tennis yet lost all of them to a Sampras playing on an altogether different plane. Not completely erroneously do they call the Swiss King the Heir to Sampras.

One shot in particular will stand out in memory forever and fill the heart with awe and joy every time I reminisce. After dominating a rally Agassi played a drop shot, drew Federer in and played a decisive volley winner... until Federer thought about pursuing the ball - moving in the same direction of the ball, target behind his back and with the back surface of his racquet, (ala Arjuna in the Draupadi Swayamvar) he flicked the ball over Agassi's head to land right on the baseline. For a moment only Agassi realised what had happened. Shell-shocked and broken, he walked to the chair. Only after an interval iof a few seconds did the complete significance of what he had achieved dawn upon Federer and the crowd.

In his regal yet humble style, the Magician put his hand on his head in disbelief and smiled. Federer is giong to be honoured with the ATP Player of the Year Award later this month and also in the running for the Fan Favourite Award.

I indeed consider myself priveliged to watch tennis at a time such a Magician is displaying his skills.