Doubles ace Mahesh Bhupathi, on Thursday, made it clear that he will not play the Davis Cup tie against Japan in April if Leander Paes remains the captain of the team.
Bhupathi, who supported Rohan Bopanna, Prakash Amritraj and Karan Rastogi in revolting against Paes' leadership, said their playing against Japan would depend on whether a senior player replaces Paes as a non-playing captain.
- 'Problems when Mahesh is around'
Rastogi, however, later retracted from his stance against Paes.
"We have to wait and see, we have taken a strong stance and as of now I don't think we will play (against Japan) until a senior player is made a non-playing captain," Bhupathi said in a television interview.
Meanwhile, Paes, who was present at the announcement of the Teery Fox run in Mumbai, refused to dwell on the issue.
A miffed Bhupathi also came down heavily on the AITA for its inept handling of the issue.
"It is disturbing that nobody (from AITA) called them (Bopanna and Prakash) after the letter.
"It (the letter) leaked out somehow from the AITA office and it has become a media frenzy since then.
"You have all the tennis pundits in the country commenting on the issue without knowing the crux of the problem.
"We don't want to hold a gun to anyone's head but someone has to take the initiative and I think that is the Association's job and they have not done that yet.
"A couple of phone calls from somebody from AITA to each one of these boys will be good start," he told NDTV.
Bhupathi said the problem was that the boys wanted a non-playing senior captain and he agreed with them.
"I know Leander for a long time, he has some very good qualities especially as a leader. But, he has to play singles, doubles and has to worry about the team also, literally too much on his plate.
"A non-playing captain can focus on the job at hand in captaincy like talking to the media, so on so forth. What the boys really want is a non-playing captain and their stance was very clear," he said.
Bhupathi was hopeful that a solution could still be worked out before going to Japan.
"The ideal situation is we face Japan with a full strength team and that will mean Paes, me, Bopanna and Amritraj playing as Japan is an Asian powerhouse in tennis. I think we can find a way to resolve everything. I think four of us playing under a senior captain would be a ideal situation."
