Name: Ramanathan Krishnan
Born: 11 April 1937, Nagercoil
State: Tamil Nadu
Sport: Tennis
Early life
Ramanathan Krishnan was born on 11 April 1937 in Nagercoil, in what was then the princely state of Travancore and is now part of Tamil Nadu. His father, T.K. Ramanathan, was himself a competitive player and gave Krishnan his first lessons, spotting his son’s talent early and arranging the best coaching he could find. Krishnan practised for hours at Delhi’s Talkatora Stadium as a boy, often alone once the older players had left for the day, and at just thirteen, while still a student at Loyola College, he won special permission to enter the Bertram Tournament, which he went on to win in 1951.
The first Asian Wimbledon junior champion
In 1954, still a teenager, Krishnan became the first Asian player to win the boys’ singles title at Wimbledon, beating Ashley Cooper in the final. He turned to the senior circuit soon after and built a career that would take him to a highest ranking of world number three, playing with a style built on touch, angled volleys and a delicate half-volley drop shot rather than raw power, a game admired by contemporaries for its elegance as much as its effectiveness.
Wimbledon semi-finals and a famous Davis Cup win
Krishnan reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon in both 1960 and 1961, a feat that remains one of the finest achieved by an Indian player at the tournament to this day, and also reached the French Open quarter-finals in 1962, adding further weight to a run of results few Asian players of his era could match. Playing Davis Cup for India, he memorably beat Australia’s Rod Laver, then the reigning Wimbledon runner-up, in four sets, and he later helped lead India to the Davis Cup Challenge Round, effectively the final, against Australia in 1966. Across a Davis Cup career stretching from 1953 to 1975 he won 69 of his 97 rubbers. In 1959 he turned down a lucrative three-year professional contract worth 150,000 dollars from the promoter Jack Kramer, choosing to remain an amateur so he could keep playing Davis Cup tennis for India, a decision that put country ahead of what would then have been a considerable personal fortune.
National dominance and later contribution
Krishnan won the Indian national tennis title for eight consecutive years, a domestic dominance that mirrored his standing on the world stage, and retired from competitive tennis in 1975 with a career singles record of 512 wins from 688 matches and 69 titles, a body of work built up over more than two decades on the international circuit. He later served as India’s non-playing Davis Cup captain, including during the 1974 campaign led on court by Vijay and Anand Amritraj, which took India all the way to the final against South Africa. India chose not to play that final in protest against the country’s apartheid policies, so the tie was conceded without a ball being struck, but reaching it remained a landmark for Indian tennis and for Krishnan’s captaincy, as he passed on decades of experience to the next generation of Indian players.
Family and later life
Krishnan’s son, Ramesh Krishnan, followed him into tennis, winning the Wimbledon junior title himself and going on to become one of India’s leading players through the 1980s, making the Krishnans one of Indian tennis’s most notable sporting families. Ramanathan later co-authored a book on the family’s tennis history, A Touch of Tennis, and has continued to be closely involved with the sport in Chennai, where he settled after retiring from competition, remaining a respected elder statesman of Indian tennis.
Achievements and awards
Semi-finalist, Wimbledon, 1960 and 1961; world number three ranking; first Asian to win the Wimbledon junior singles title, 1954; national champion for eight consecutive years; Davis Cup finalist, 1966; Arjuna Award, 1961; Padma Shri, 1962; Padma Bhushan, 1967.
