Features

A Look Back on Djokovic’s French Open

Published

3 years ago

2023/06/25

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

I watched the final of the French Open a couple of Sundays ago, and was enthralled to see current World No. 1 Novak Djokovic beat the gallant Dane, Caspar Ruud, runner-up at this event last year, in straight sets to claim his 23rd Major title, a record which now can only be broken by himself.

In an era where we have been lucky to enjoy the effortless grace of Federer and the indefatigable courage of Nadal, the consummate superiority of a complete tennis player was on display at Roland Garros.

Perhaps he – and no one – will excel the grace and charm of Federer’s game. Perhaps no one will ever parallel the sportsmanship of Stefan Edberg, the Swede who won six Grand Slam men’s singles, two each of Wimbledon, Australian and US Open titles, in the 1980s and 90s. Being a quintessential serve and volley player, the red clay of Roland Garros did not suit his type of game.

It’s entirely possible that Carlos Alcaraz, who was beaten by Djokovic in the semi-finals, will fulfill the incredible talent he has already shown and break all records, one day in the future.

Much has been made of the long bathroom break Djokovic took after the second set of the semi-final, when Carlito was showing signs of distress caused by cramp. A break that many implied that Djokovic used as a means to further upset the rhythm of an injured man. Be that as it may, physical condition is an essential part of the game, so surely a 20-year-old should not be suffering from cramps after two hard sets, when a 36-year-old looked supremely fit to continue.

As Djokovic himself said, “I don’t want to say I am the greatest….because I feel it is disrespectful towards all the great champions in different eras of our sport that was played in a completely different way than it is played today. So I feel each great champion of his own generation has left a huge mark, a legacy, and paved the way for us to be able to play this sport in such a great stage worldwide”.

A statement of grace and humility, from a man for whom the best may well be yet to come. As lead coach Goran Ivanisevic, himself a Wimbledon Champion in the 1990s, said: “Novak has in his body has many more slams”.

His main rival, Carlos Alcaraz, the World’s No.1 till Djokovic beat him in a semi-final marred by injury, was magnanimous in his defeat:

“Many people want to create controversy about Novak’s bathroom break. But no, I don’t believe it influenced anything. The physical demands Novak placed on me (in the first two sets) had an impact. Ultimately, I couldn’t hold on physically. And I don’t blame him for closing the match.

“It’s not easy to play against Novak, you know. Of course a legend in our sport. If someone says that he gets into the court with no nerves playing against Novak, he lies”.

For me, for now, Novak Djokovic reigns supreme, the world’s complete tennis player. Until Wimbledon in a couple of weeks.

I have been following tennis since the 1950s, the days of Pancho Gonzales and Frank Sedgman, great players who were not able to compete in the Grand Slam events because they were professionals, ordinary human beings who had to earn a living, usually by coaching and exhibition matches. I had the great good fortune to attend such an exhibition match in 1959 at the Wembley Stadium in London, when Segura and Sedgman played Gonzales and Trabert. I was dazzled by their wonderful tennis, although they were mainly kidding around. I still remember Pancho Segura placing a half-crown coin where the center service line meets the service line(I hope I’ve got that right), and Pancho Gonzales, who had a wonderful serve, sent the coin flying every time.

In those days, no prize money was awarded for the qualified amateurs, who were reimbursed for their travel expenses only.

The tennis scene has changed beyond recognition since the advent of the Open Era in 1968, when all players, amateur and professional, were allowed to play in the four Grand Slam events, Wimbledon, the US Open, Roland Garros and Australia.

The prize money for these Grand Slam events has now reached staggering levels. When Rod Laver beat Tony Roche to win the first Open Wimbledon title in 1968, he was paid a mere 2,000 pounds sterling, which in today’s US dollars amount to approximately $25,000.

The total French Open prize money in 2023 was 43.9 million Euros (US$47 million), with the winners of the men’s and women’s singles titles, Novak Djokovic and Iga Swiatek, taking home princely purses of 2.3 million Euros (US$ 2.46 million) each. Even a first-round loser was paid 69,000 Euros (US$ 74,000).

In the late 1950s, I was a student in London. I never saw the French Open live, but was a regular at Wimbledon, originally and grandly named the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The total cost of a day at Wimbledon during the tournament – travel to Wimbledon by tube, a ticket to watch the tennis in many courts, with a British snack best described as substantial but tasteless, cost under a couple of pounds – Rs. 30, well within the budget of Ceylonese students in London. We were allowed a lavish monthly allowance of 45 pounds – Rs. 650 – by the Exchange Controller, an amount more than sufficient for us to lead most comfortable lives in England.

The only match at Wimbledon I remember to this day is one in which Nicola Pietrangeli of Italy and India’s Ramanathan Krishnan, both touch players, were pitted against each other in one of the early rounds in the late 1950s. Wonderful tennis of elegance and nuance, touch shots and finesse I enjoyed at courtside, a match forever etched in my mind. I cannot remember who won, which is hardly surprising, as, using the modern technology of today, I learnt that these two wonderful players had never competed against each other at Wimbledon.

Which goes to prove the old adage: the older we are, the better we – and our memories – were! Ah, how well-timed were our cover drives, how accurate our backhand volleys, how much prettier were the girls who reluctantly agreed to date us. Selective amnesia is a wonderful feature of one’s memory.

At school, I was an above-average tennis player, who, with an exceptionally talented partner, won the junior doubles title for Royal at the Public Schools Championships in 1956. I was a member of the tennis team at Christ Church, during my brief career at Oxford. We played against many colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, but the only match I remember was the Christ Church encounter against the OULTC (Oxford University Ladies Tennis Club). We were thrashed by some very fine lady players, but more than compensated in making new and attractive friends.

On my return from England, I continued playing club tennis on a regular basis, most often at the then exclusive, mainly white, Queen’s Club where, in those bad old days, natives had to be “invited” to join. Inevitably, I incurred the wrath of my paradoxically proud Ceylonese though Anglophile father, by accepting this invitation. I participated in many of the Club’s tennis tournaments, the highlight being a win in the Club Men’s Singles final, where I beat an Englishman, a Cambridge Blue, no less.

National Champion at the time, P.S. Kumara, also a club member, swears that I had begged of him not to enter the aforementioned event. This was an extremely insignificant title in his eyes, and being an old friend, he complied with my plea. But he went on to spread a scurrilous rumor that not only had I persuaded him not to participate, but, in my capacity as tennis convenor of the Club, I had “nobbled” the draw to ease my path to the final. Again, due perhaps to the above-mentioned selective amnesia, I remember only my win, and nothing of my friend Kum’s concocted calumny.

I also loved to travel to the “outstation” clubs, like Bandarawela, Talawakelle, Dixon’s Corner and so many others, where the members, mainly planters (and more likely, their most attractive wives), organized wonderful weekend tennis tournaments. The hospitality of our hosts was boundless, the dances they organized on the Saturdays of the tournament, entirely on British lines, beyond enjoyable. I well remember such an event in Udapusselawa, where, after the dance ended around 5 a.m., our planter host treated us to a breakfast of kippers and onions at his home, a meal I hadn’t enjoyed since my student days in London. After which, as I had qualified to play the later rounds, I was expected back at the club courts at 10.m., seriously hung over and miserable. But the hair of the dog* usually did the trick.

My greatest achievement in tennis was at Ratnapura. The late Bernard Pinto, also a National Tennis Champion in his day, paid me the honor of inviting me to play the men’s doubles with him at the club tournament in his hometown. Thanks to Bernard’s consummate skills (he instructed me to retreat into the sidelines after I served and hopefully returned serve), and leave the rest to him. We (really Bernard alone, for the most part) won the final with ease, but I had the last laugh when I persuaded the announcer at the awards ceremony to call the results thus: “Chandrasoma and partner win the men’s doubles 6/2, 6/2.”

I will try to make up for indulging myself writing about a sport I love (rather than my regular rants about the man I loathe) by presuming to provide the reader with some information about the French Open. Specifically, the origins of the naming of France’s premier tournament after Roland Garros, a French World War I hero. And the story behind the widely displayed phrase in the stadium “Victory belongs only to the most Tenacious”.

Officially named ‘Internationaux de France de Tennis’, the French now use the name Roland-Garros in all languages for the French Open.

In 1927, for the first time in history, the French beat the United States in the Davis Cup. To celebrate this monumental win, the French built a new, 20-court stadium in Paris in 1928. The French decided to name their new stadium after Roland Garros, a pioneer of military aviation and the nation’s most highly decorated, fighter pilot in WW I. He was tragically shot down by the Germans in 1918. He left a legacy of intelligence, bravery and honor, traits the French Open looks to emulate.

The phrase “Victory belongs only to the Persevering”, which is displayed prominently in the stadium, is a quote attributed to Napoleon I, which Roland Garros made his own … “so much so that he inscribed it on his planes’ propellers”. The French considered it a statement of admiration for the quality of tenacity, the attribute expected of all those who participate in the French Open, the Roland Garros tournament.

*Hair of the dog. This phrase is drawn from an ancient cure for a wound caused by a rabid dog bite. A clump of hair from the same rabid dog was placed on the wound, hopefully resulting in relief. Similarly, when suffering from a hangover caused by excessive consumption of alcohol, the ingestion of a small amount of alcohol is supposed to provide relief from the original cause of the malaise.

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Features

Recruiting academics to state universities – beset by archaic selection processes?

Published

8 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

by Kaushalya Perera

Time has, by and large, stood still in the business of academic staff recruitment to state universities. Qualifications have proliferated and evolved to be more interdisciplinary, but our selection processes and evaluation criteria are unchanged since at least the late 1990s. But before I delve into the problems, I will describe the existing processes and schemes of recruitment. The discussion is limited to UGC-governed state universities (and does not include recruitment to medical and engineering sectors) though the problems may be relevant to other higher education institutions (HEIs).

How recruitment happens currently in SL state universities

Academic ranks in Sri Lankan state universities can be divided into three tiers (subdivisions are not discussed).

* Lecturer (Probationary)

– recruited with a four-year undergraduate degree. A tiny step higher is the Lecturer (Unconfirmed), recruited with a postgraduate degree but no teaching experience.

* A Senior Lecturer can be recruited with certain postgraduate qualifications and some number of years of teaching and research.

* Above this is the professor (of four types), which can be left out of this discussion since only one of those (Chair Professor) is by application.

State universities cannot hire permanent academic staff as and when they wish. Prior to advertising a vacancy, approval to recruit is obtained through a mind-numbing and time-consuming process (months!) ending at the Department of Management Services. The call for applications must list all ranks up to Senior Lecturer. All eligible candidates for Probationary to Senior Lecturer are interviewed, e.g., if a Department wants someone with a doctoral degree, they must still advertise for and interview candidates for all ranks, not only candidates with a doctoral degree. In the evaluation criteria, the first degree is more important than the doctoral degree (more on this strange phenomenon later). All of this is only possible when universities are not under a ‘hiring freeze’, which governments declare regularly and generally lasts several years.

Problem type 1

– Archaic processes and evaluation criteria

Twenty-five years ago, as a probationary lecturer with a first degree, I was a typical hire. We would be recruited, work some years and obtain postgraduate degrees (ideally using the privilege of paid study leave to attend a reputed university in the first world). State universities are primarily undergraduate teaching spaces, and when doctoral degrees were scarce, hiring probationary lecturers may have been a practical solution. The path to a higher degree was through the academic job. Now, due to availability of candidates with postgraduate qualifications and the problems of retaining academics who find foreign postgraduate opportunities, preference for candidates applying with a postgraduate qualification is growing. The evaluation scheme, however, prioritises the first degree over the candidate’s postgraduate education. Were I to apply to a Faculty of Education, despite a PhD on language teaching and research in education, I may not even be interviewed since my undergraduate degree is not in education. The ‘first degree first’ phenomenon shows that universities essentially ignore the intellectual development of a person beyond their early twenties. It also ignores the breadth of disciplines and their overlap with other fields.

This can be helped (not solved) by a simple fix, which can also reduce brain drain: give precedence to the doctoral degree in the required field, regardless of the candidate’s first degree, effected by a UGC circular. The suggestion is not fool-proof. It is a first step, and offered with the understanding that any selection process, however well the evaluation criteria are articulated, will be beset by multiple issues, including that of bias. Like other Sri Lankan institutions, universities, too, have tribal tendencies, surfacing in the form of a preference for one’s own alumni. Nevertheless, there are other problems that are, arguably, more pressing as I discuss next. In relation to the evaluation criteria, a problem is the narrow interpretation of any regulation, e.g., deciding the degree’s suitability based on the title rather than considering courses in the transcript. Despite rhetoric promoting internationalising and inter-disciplinarity, decision-making administrative and academic bodies have very literal expectations of candidates’ qualifications, e.g., a candidate with knowledge of digital literacy should show this through the title of the degree!

Problem type 2 – The mess of badly regulated higher education

A direct consequence of the contemporary expansion of higher education is a large number of applicants with myriad qualifications. The diversity of degree programmes cited makes the responsibility of selecting a suitable candidate for the job a challenging but very important one. After all, the job is for life – it is very difficult to fire a permanent employer in the state sector.

Widely varying undergraduate degree programmes.

At present, Sri Lankan undergraduates bring qualifications (at times more than one) from multiple types of higher education institutions: a degree from a UGC-affiliated state university, a state university external to the UGC, a state institution that is not a university, a foreign university, or a private HEI aka ‘private university’. It could be a degree received by attending on-site, in Sri Lanka or abroad. It could be from a private HEI’s affiliated foreign university or an external degree from a state university or an online only degree from a private HEI that is ‘UGC-approved’ or ‘Ministry of Education approved’, i.e., never studied in a university setting. Needless to say, the diversity (and their differences in quality) are dizzying. Unfortunately, under the evaluation scheme all degrees ‘recognised’ by the UGC are assigned the same marks. The same goes for the candidates’ merits or distinctions, first classes, etc., regardless of how difficult or easy the degree programme may be and even when capabilities, exposure, input, etc are obviously different.

Similar issues are faced when we consider postgraduate qualifications, though to a lesser degree. In my discipline(s), at least, a postgraduate degree obtained on-site from a first-world university is preferable to one from a local university (which usually have weekend or evening classes similar to part-time study) or online from a foreign university. Elitist this may be, but even the best local postgraduate degrees cannot provide the experience and intellectual growth gained by being in a university that gives you access to six million books and teaching and supervision by internationally-recognised scholars. Unfortunately, in the evaluation schemes for recruitment, the worst postgraduate qualification you know of will receive the same marks as one from NUS, Harvard or Leiden.

The problem is clear but what about a solution?

Recruitment to state universities needs to change to meet contemporary needs. We need evaluation criteria that allows us to get rid of the dross as well as a more sophisticated institutional understanding of using them. Recruitment is key if we want our institutions (and our country) to progress. I reiterate here the recommendations proposed in ‘Considerations for Higher Education Reform’ circulated previously by Kuppi Collective:

* Change bond regulations to be more just, in order to retain better qualified academics.

* Update the schemes of recruitment to reflect present-day realities of inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary training in order to recruit suitably qualified candidates.

* Ensure recruitment processes are made transparent by university administrations.

Kaushalya Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo.

(Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.)

Features

Talento … oozing with talent

Published

8 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

Talento: Gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band

This week, too, the spotlight is on an outfit that has gained popularity, mainly through social media.

Last week we had MISTER Band in our scene, and on 10th February, Yellow Beatz – both social media favourites.

Talento is a seven-piece band that plays all types of music, from the ‘60s to the modern tracks of today.

The band has reached many heights, since its inception in 2012, and has gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band in the scene here.

The members that makeup the outfit have a solid musical background, which comes through years of hard work and dedication

Their portfolio of music contains a mix of both western and eastern songs and are carefully selected, they say, to match the requirements of the intended audience, occasion, or event.

Although the baila is a specialty, which is inherent to this group, that originates from Moratuwa, their repertoire is made up of a vast collection of love, classic, oldies and modern-day hits.

The musicians, who make up Talento, are:

Prabuddha Geetharuchi:

Geilee Fonseka: Dynamic and charismatic vocalist

Prabuddha Geetharuchi: The main man behind the band Talento

(Vocalist/ Frontman). He is an avid music enthusiast and was mentored by a lot of famous musicians, and trainers, since he was a child. Growing up with them influenced him to take on western songs, as well as other music styles. A Peterite, he is the main man behind the band Talento and is a versatile singer/entertainer who never fails to get the crowd going.

Geilee Fonseka (Vocals):

A dynamic and charismatic vocalist whose vibrant stage presence, and powerful voice, bring a fresh spark to every performance. Young, energetic, and musically refined, she is an artiste who effortlessly blends passion with precision – captivating audiences from the very first note. Blessed with an immense vocal range, Geilee is a truly versatile singer, confidently delivering Western and Eastern music across multiple languages and genres.

Chandana Perera (Drummer):

His expertise and exceptional skills have earned him recognition as one of the finest acoustic drummers in Sri Lanka. With over 40 tours under his belt, Chandana has demonstrated his dedication and passion for music, embodying the essential role of a drummer as the heartbeat of any band.

Harsha Soysa:

(Bassist/Vocalist). He a chorister of the western choir of St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa, who began his musical education under famous voice trainers, as well as bass guitar trainers in Sri Lanka. He has also performed at events overseas. He acts as the second singer of the band

Udara Jayakody:

(Keyboardist). He is also a qualified pianist, adding technical flavour to Talento’s music. His singing and harmonising skills are an extra asset to the band. From his childhood he has been a part of a number of orchestras as a pianist. He has also previously performed with several famous western bands.

Aruna Madushanka:

(Saxophonist). His proficiciency in playing various instruments, including the saxophone, soprano saxophone, and western flute, showcases his versatility as a musician, and his musical repertoire is further enhanced by his remarkable singing ability.

Prashan Pramuditha:

(Lead guitar). He has the ability to play different styles, both oriental and western music, and he also creates unique tones and patterns with the guitar..

Features

Special milestone for JJ Twins

Published

8 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

Twin brothers Julian and Jason Prins

The JJ Twins, the Sri Lankan musical duo, performing in the Maldives, and known for blending R&B, Hip Hop, and Sri Lankan rhythms, thereby creating a unique sound, have come out with a brand-new single ‘Me Mawathe.’

In fact, it’s a very special milestone for the twin brothers, Julian and Jason Prins, as ‘Me Mawathe’ is their first ever Sinhala song!

‘Me Mawathe’ showcases a fresh new sound, while staying true to the signature harmony and emotion that their fans love.

This heartfelt track captures the beauty of love, journey, and connection, brought to life through powerful vocals and captivating melodies.

It marks an exciting new chapter for the JJ Twins as they expand their musical journey and connect with audiences in a whole new way.

Their recent album, ‘CONCLUDED,’ explores themes of love, heartbreak, and healing, and include hits like ‘Can’t Get You Off My Mind’ and ‘You Left Me Here to Die’ which showcase their emotional intensity.

Readers could stay connected and follow JJ Twins on social media for exclusive updates, behind-the-scenes moments, and upcoming releases:

Instagram: http://instagram.com/jjtwinsofficial

TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@jjtwinsmusic

Facebook: http://facebook.com/jjtwinssingers

YouTube: http://youtube.com/jjtwins