Two courts, one Becker and of 'serves' in both!

Raju Korti
For someone nicknamed "Boom Boom" in his heyday for his imperious serves, this is one serve that Boris Becker will not be proud of but will have to serve it anyway. The tennis sensation who strode the Wimbledon like a colossus at a time when current sensations Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were just toddlers, has been served with a two-and-half-year jail stretch by a UK court after being found guilty of violating the Insolvency Laws. The blonde who basked in the glory of kissing his golden Wimbledon trophy at just 17, declared bankruptcy while he owed his creditors Pounds 50 million. For a former Number One with six Grand Slam titles, this is a slam that is not grand by any stretch of imagination.

Becker's tennis career is stuff folklores are made of. I clearly recall watching on my Black and White TV the unseeded 17-year-old, hands raised, before an awe-struck crowd kissing the golden Wimbledon trophy as the youngest ever achiever. It was a dream beginning for any sportsman and Becker showed in the times to come that his rip-roaring success was not a flash in the pan as he went on to annex one Grand Slam after the another in his rising trajectory. But what went up also came down as the vagary of Murphy's Law caught up with him.

Becker is an interesting case study of how people who court blinding success in their career also get overshadowed by a turbulent private life and financial troubles. Having made a fortune out of his swashbuckling talent, his downfall was as protracted as his rise was rapid. And to think of it, becoming a tennis professional was the last thing on his mind. Destiny took a somersault for the charismatic man who hurtled to chaos from a grand standing that he enjoyed in the UK as one of its favourite citizens.

The legal code admits that Law is blind because it goes by the merits of the case and is essentially indiscriminate in nature. Its presumption that lawmakers are fair to all the people all the time is more hypothetical makes sense prima facie but reality often ignores the social upshots that often get relegated. I am aware that this is a highly subjective and therefore debatable issue but that only underscores the need for applying Law with due considerations. In Becker's case it is not just fall from the grace but hitting the abyss of public humiliation. 

From whatever I have gathered, there doesn't seem to be much outcry over Becker's sentence, something that would have made a subject of raging debate in India which erupts into frenzy when celebrities are mired in legal cases.  Conventionally, public sympathy goes with them purely on the emotional quotient as they are generally viewed as the "victims". In his home country of Germany, the media has reacted a little harshly to his punishment. That is understandable as Becker chose to become a British citizen on the premise that "he enjoyed no privacy in Germany and its citizens thought as if they were entitled to him." In the Indian mindset, this emotional crush would have seen a situation to the contrary where the celebrity would feel entitled to his country instead.

It is a paradox -- as remarkable as his career -- that Becker doesn't find much sympathy in a country who he chose to live in because people moved on with small pleasantries and were not overbearing. He now has to decided in his conventional wisdom whether that serves him right or maybe not. History is replete with examples where stars the sporting arena (among others), have had an extra run riding on public support and sympathy when they should have either been punished or faded away from the scene. Remember how Kapil Dev struggled to beat Richard Hadlee's (then) record of 431 wickets at the generosity of the cricketing board, how the likes of Hansie Cronje, Steve Smith and David Warner garnered huge public sympathy when the Law went against them for their acts of commisions and omissions to quote just a few instances. It is fascinating that the Law which owes its origin to social expediencies makes no concession for public beneficience. Some might believe the comparisons unwarranted but Law and Propriety are blind in every sense of the word.

If Becker has broken the Law, he deserves to be punished as matter of truth but a man who has brought so much glory to his foster country at the cost of his own doting countrymen of birth, also deserves some leniency. Law is blind, so it caught up with him. The British media should probe him whether he still stands by his old views about his citizenship when his meadowed presence in his chosen country  has invited more ignominy than the ardor of where he took his roots.

If I may exercise my quotabulary: Becker served one court, the other served him. Both served justice and ironically, Becker has served as a mascot of both.