The Mahesh Bhupathi vs Leander Paes war goes nuclear, both players vent through social media posts

The high of India qualifying for the World Group Play-offs with a 4-1 win over Uzbekistan in their Asia/Oceania Group I second-round tie on Sunday has come crashing down. The attention has then swung back to the war-of-words currently being exchanged between Indian skipper Mahesh Bhupathi, and his former partner, and current Davis Cup team member, Leander Paes.

Paes, who wasn’t included in the team hadn’t taken his selection omission well and had retorted that there wasn’t ‘transparency’ in the team selection, before the start of the tie. When asked, Bhupathi had mentioned that he would give his response to Paes’ comments after the completion of the tie.

Consequentially, on Sunday, Bhupathi categorically went on to say, “Like I said in the press conference on Thursday, I am a big believer that we don’t require a doubles specialist for the Davis Cup team. As of today, Rohan Bopanna is India’s number one doubles player by far.”

He had also added that there wasn’t any bias at play for Bopanna being preferred over Paes and that it wasn’t right on Paes’ part to leave the team midway, instead of staying on and lending his support.

“I had asked Leander to do fitness test. I mean I am extremely proud of the fact that he won the Challenger. But in the same breath Rohan also competed at highest level. So, my criteria was not of one or two things, but five, and that included fitness, of course. The six-man squad is to build a team. This (Paes walking off the day after his arrival) is one of the many shocking things that has transpired this week,” Bhupathi noted.

Venting through social media posts

As a measure of justifying the veracity of his claims, Bhupathi also publically shared his Whatsapp conversation with Paes, which didn’t go so well with the latter.

In addition to this, Bhupathi also posted a lengthy message on his personal social media channel wherein he talked about how he had been a fan of Paes in the early 1990s, when he had just been included in the Indian Davis Cup team. Bhupathi mentioned, “Let me [be] the first to say, there was never a personal Feud, when I came on the Davis cup scene in 1994 I was a Leander fan and was excited to see him play Wayne Ferreira who was [ranked] 10th in the world.

He then went on to add, “However things changed quickly, when both our captain sir Jaideep Mukerjea and coach Enrico Piperno were strong armed out of the team end of 1999 because he had heard a rumour of them being upset he didn’t come for the tie against Italy but was fully fit to play the Chennai Open the following week, that should have been the first red flag.”

Paes immediately responded by making a statement of his own on his personal social media platform, countering, “As far as the fans out there are concerned, they just have to examine who won what for our country when representing the flag. Talk is cheap, history books, however, don’t lie.”