Will start off in Sydney with Cuevas: Rohan Bopanna

Bengaluru: Following a slightly turbulent year on court, Indian doubles player Rohan Bopanna is keen to put 2016 behind and focus on the upcoming season.

At the sidelines of a Rohan Bopanna Tennis Academy event, the 36-year-old held forth on his plans for the next season, his new doubles partner and the future of Indian tennis.

Excerpts:
Plans with new doubles partner?
Pablo Cuevas is similar to Florin Mergea. He serves and stays back. He is a singles player, but he has been playing doubles for the whole of this year. (A) few years ago, he won French Open doubles. He reached the semifinals of Australian Open this year. His priority is singles. So I’ll go as per his schedule. We are starting off in Sydney, and then go to Melbourne, Indian Wells and Miami and see where it goes.

On India’s Davis Cup future
I think to make the World Group level, you have to have two strong singles players. No matter how strong the doubles team maybe, the world group playoffs are against strong teams who have good singles players. That’s where I think it makes the difference. Last time we were there was 2011 when Somdev and I played singles.

We have done very well coming into the playoffs. We played New Zealand in New Zealand and won so it will be good to play them at home (in February). We are looking forward to that and I think we have a good chance of getting back to the playoffs and hopefully by then Saketh (Myneni), Yuki (Bhambri) and Ramkumar (Ramanathan) are playing some good tennis and can beat one of the top guys to qualify for the World Group.

On the right time to promote Purav Raja-Divij Sharan as our main doubles team?
They are doing extremely well. They have had a terrific year and now is the time for them to start doing well in Tour events. They have done well to get to the top 60-70 in the world. They have great potential. It’s not just them, even Jeevan Neduncheziyan is in the top 100 so you have to give credit to him for going from No. 250 at the start of the year to where he is. These are the guys you have to push and keep supporting so that they reach the top.

On the future on Indian tennis
Saketh had a good year this time, but unfortunately a few injuries set him back. But, guys like Ramkumar, Prajnesh (Gunneswaran) and Sumit (Nagal) are working hard. But foremost I think, we need more ATP Challengers here in India to help the guys grow and develop. If there are more Challengers here, that can help the Indian guys come out and perform to their best. And add to that, Yuki, once he is back from his injury and is fully fit, I think he has a great career ahead of him.

On his preferred doubles partner in Davis Cup
We got to see who the right team are. They want to take more singles players, three singles players, in the team and that takes only one specialist doubles player. We have to leave it to the federation. If I am fit, then I will be available to play the Davis Cup but it’s up to the selectors to choose.

On playing mixed doubles with Sania Mirza
It’s again something both of us are open to doing. She is doing well with Ivan Dodig and also their combined ranking gets them better seeding, because my ranking has dropped a little bit. So that makes a difference while choosing partners. I think right now she is happy playing with him and hopefully in the future we will play together.