Sunil Gavaskar on Alcaraz’s win over Djokovic and Spain’s Euro 2024 title run

It was a Spanish Sunday, all right, as first Carlos Alcaraz, the 21-year-old Spaniard, won the All England Men’s Singles title at Wimbledon, defeating Novak Djokovic in straight sets, and then a few hours later, the Spanish football team ended the dream of the England football team of winning their first title since 1966.

While Alcaraz made Djokovic, the winner of 24 major titles, look like a rank amateur, the Euro Cup football final was a closer affair, where Spain pulled away in the last 10 minutes to register a 2-1 win. Spain were by far the best team in the tournament, having won all their matches, and the way they bounced back after England scored the equaliser was incredible.

Let me confess that I have very little idea about football, so kindly excuse the next few lines. Having seen a bit of football on TV in the 1970s and ‘80s, some of it in black and white and a lot in colour TV, the feeling that is overpowering is that the modern game is no longer the beautiful game it was back then. This feeling was reinforced while watching a colour version of the 1966 World Cup final that was won by England against West Germany (as Germany was called then) in front of their adoring crowd in Wembley. Throughout that game, there was no instance of shirt pulling by the opposition player, none of the trying to elbow the opponent’s eye into his brain while jumping up for the header, none of the trying to tackle the player from behind with arms around the neck and shoulders, which is more suited for wrestling than football, and above all, no acting as if one has been injured grievously and won’t be able to play the rest of the season and not just the current match.

If ever Oscar awards are given for acting in the sporting arena, the football players will win it hands down every single time. The way the player is writhing in pain one moment and the manner in which he magically recovers barely a minute later has to be a modern miracle if it were not acting of the highest order.

Yes, the game is more physical now, and that’s because it has been allowed to be so by lax referees, who are more concerned about keeping the game moving. Those who follow the game more avidly than me can be better judges of whether the game is better being so physical as it is now or whether the physicality has gone a tad over the top. The thing about sports is that once a mistake is overlooked or ignored, more people do it because they have already seen somebody get away with it.

In cricket, the modern practice of bowlers, especially the quick ones, getting a refreshing drink on the boundary line where they go to field after completing their over is an example of the authorities turning a blind eye to the practice. Why have the drinks interval then if bowlers are going to get themselves hydrated after going flat out for six deliveries? Mind you, the batter doesn’t get the chance to have a drink after an over where they may have taken eight runs or so, which are all run. Cricket is also a game where stamina and endurance matter no matter what the format is, so frankly, it should go back to the days when drinks were taken only after every hour of play and before that only with the permission of the opposition captain and umpires. Once the umpires looked the other way and allowed one bowler to do that, it became a trend, making a mockery of the drinks interval. The third umpire and match referee should also ensure that the reserve player does not step onto the field to offer a drink to his teammate but stays outside the boundary line.

Coming back to tennis, Alcaraz’s annihilation of Djokovic may hasten the Serbian into retirement after this season is over. Djokovic somehow does not get the same love and affection from the crowd as Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal did, but with four more majors than Federer and two more than Nadal, he is, for all practical purposes, the greatest player of this generation.

Hopefully, he will call time on his career before he starts getting beaten by players nowhere close to him. It was sad to see Federer lose in the earlier rounds of his last year or so, and that’s why it’s hoped Djokovic goes out on a high in a final even though he may not have won it. The retirement call is never easy, particularly for a sportsperson.

More than the body, it’s the mind that tells you when it’s time to go, and that happens when one is not enjoying doing what one is doing and when work becomes a chore.

In a sportsperson’s case, it is when he or she is not enjoying being out there battling an opponent. That’s when the R-word needs to be taken and completed.