Novak Djokovic: Tennis superstar; number one in the ATP world rankings. Winner of ten major singles titles and the current holder of the Australian Open, Wimbledon and US Open titles. Fifth on the all-time list of players holding the top ranking in numbers of weeks. A place already assured amongst the all-time greats of the game.
But there is, of course, a significant gap in his CV. Like Pete Sampras, John McEnroe and Boris Becker before him, Djokovic has never won the French Open. He has not — at least, not yet — mastered clay.
Tennis is a sport which changes totally according to the surface it is played on, and only handful of its players throughout history could claim to have a game suited to them all. A player almost unbeatable on clay might struggle to get beyond the first round or two elsewhere – Gustavo Kuerten, for example, won the French Open three times yet never got beyond the quarter-finals in any other major tournament. Conversely the serve-and-volley specialist, ideally suited to fast Wimbledon grass, has to completely change his game and his mindset to compete with the dogged baseliner on clay.
This is the sport. No-one complains. No surface is considered superior to any other. Players suited to particular surfaces win on them, and those who generally aren’t celebrate red-letter day victories on those occasions that they do. And only the great players – the truly great players – win consistently wherever they go.
Cricket is the only other sport so influenced by the nature of the surfaces it is played on. Different parts of the world produce pitches with radically different and decidedly local characteristics, whether English seamers, bouncy Australian roads or subcontinental turners. And the results of the matches played out on them tell us that in perhaps no other sport is home advantage so important.
How cricket can learn from tennis
The Tests played over the past couple of weeks have followed a familiar pattern. Pakistan wrapped up a 2-0 series victory over England and remain unbeaten in Test series in their temporary home in the UAE. And in the first Tests of their series, both India and Australia completed crushing victories against South Africa and New Zealand respectively.
Down to home pitches? Well, in part. In the UAE, spin, in the form of Yasir Shah in particular, proved to be the most crucial difference between the two sides. In Mohali a total of thirty-four wickets in the match fell to the spinners, with India’s trio of R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Amit Mishra accounting for nineteen of them. In Australia the damage was done by mammoth innings from David Warner, Usman Khawaja and Joe Burns, backed up by Australia’s potent seam attack, on Brisbane’s customary quick, bouncy surface.
However, an understanding of the fuller picture needs to take account of psychological as well as physical dimensions. Last week, South Africa’s players were defeated as much by the gremlins in their minds as any in the pitch. The dry Mohali pitch set warning bells ringing within the team before a ball had even been bowled. Once they had seen the pitch before the match began South Africa were, in the words of Faf du Plessis, “fearing the worst”. And, in due course, they found it.
Hashim Amla’s dismissal in the second innings typified their display with the bat – taking guard outside leg, the tactic he had used so successfully against Graeme Swann in 2012, Amla left alone a ball from Jadeja that turned not an inch and cannoned straight into middle and off. Done for by anxiety, not by reality.
Amla himself hit the nail on the head in his post-match interviews. The problems were, he said, not in the pitch but rather in the mindset and application of his batsmen. And herein lies the crux of the issue. Unlike tennis players, it has become expedient for defeated cricketers to blame the surface they have been playing on rather than face reality — their inability to adapt technique to local conditions.
Too many players at the moment seem to have a technique based on playing at home, coupled with an ingrained, T20-bred lack of the patience and application necessary to dig in and grind out tough runs when required. Alastair Cook has been so successful abroad, particularly in Asia, precisely because he has proved he is able to do this. Steve Smith, on the other hand, despite his position as the number one Test batsman in the ICC rankings, has often struggled away from home. His exaggerated cross-crease trigger movement is ideally suited to Australian pitches — on a flat or pacy Aussie-style track he scores and scores heavily. But that same movement becomes a technical liability when faced with a turning or, as in England last summer, seaming ball.
Home teams cannot be expected to provide pitches to suit their opponents, of course. They will naturally play to their strengths – that is what home advantage is all about after all. In Davis Cup tennis, the home team chooses the surface each tie will be played on and everyone gets on with it. In cricket, however, the surface provides far too convenient an excuse for losing teams to hide behind. The best teams and the best players will always be those who are most willing and able to adapt to different surfaces. And, as in tennis, the legends of the game will always be remembered as those who truly succeeded.
