Summer sports

During my book party one month ago — rather surprisingly, the thing is selling well — I spotted Ferdinand Mount in the crowd and asked him to meet a friend of mine. Ferdy recognised the name immediately. ‘You brought cheer to the plains of India,’ he told Naresh Kumar, quoting a headline of more than 50 years ago. Mount then went on to quote from one of his own dispatches: ‘As the shadows lengthened in the Centre Court of Wimbledon, the soft touch and tricky lobs of Kumar–Krishnan tied their opponents in knots,’ or words to that effect. Naresh Kumar was one of the most popular players on the tennis circuit during the mid and late 1950s. A gentleman through and through, he played in 101 Wimbledon matches and actually did bring cheer to the plains of India. He and I were friends on the tour, although I was more often than not unemployed after the first round, whereas he was always working, including the weekends.