September 14-16
Hello everyone!
The latest episode of Super September on round 2 of the
Astana adventure comes from yet another new shiny sporting stadium in the
capital. The venue this time was the National Tennis Centre, a small but
intimate stadium where Kazakhstan’s tennis stars show off their skills to their
adoring public.
All twenty of them. It was surprising for many reasons that
few locals came to watch Kazakhstan’s Davis Cup tennis match over the course of
the weekend. One is the fact that Kazakhstan, ranked 8th in the
world, are one of the better teams in men’s tennis. Their team included a
player, Mikhail Kukushkin, who has previously played impressively against
Federer at Wimbledon, and others who have graced the world’s top 50.
Another is the fact
that tickets for this match, in the highest tier of international tennis called
the World Group (Britain aren’t there), were available for 500T. Just over £2. Try finding those prices for a match in New York, Buenos
Aires or Gijon. Tennis is also said to be Kazakhstan’s more favoured sports, so
to find so many empty seats on the two days of action we saw was somewhat
disheartening.
On the Friday, the first day of
action, we swelled the crowd significantly by bringing our elder children with
us on a school trip. Though some were apathetic to the incredible quality of
tennis on show, others were captivated by Kazakhstan’s attempts to overcome
their regional rival, Uzbekistan, and stay in the elite group of tennis
nations.
The lack of a large attendance
figure should not detract from the efforts of some fans to generate an
intimidating atmosphere. One small collection of Kazakh fans played deafeningly
loud percussion and brass music inbetween points, to a point where the umpire
had to tell them to be quiet. One serve from the top-ranked Uzbek player,
Istomin, got stuck in the net and was called ‘fault’ by the umpire. The
trombonist calmly stood up and blared out a ‘wha-whar’ sound.
The match we watched was a
five-set epic, which our brave Kazakh competitor lost to a man ranked almost
200 places above him. We missed the other Kazakh player level up the tie due to
school commitments. The players took some much-needed rest, and we decided to
also take a breather from working life at a flat warming party.
A Davis Cup tie is played over three days, however, so there was
much more action to see. We watched the doubles match on the Saturday, where
Kazakhstan were roared on to a convincing victory by a slighter larger crowd. The
only barrier to the straightforward win was the fact that the lights failed at
the end of the second set. The fact that the players went off whilst sunlight
was bursting through the translucent roof, as well as the electric sound system
blaring music, was a ‘we’re in Kazakhstan’ moment for us. The win gave them the
upper hand in the overall tie, and they wrapped up a 3-1 victory on the final
day.
Kazakhstan is an emerging sporting nation, as their recent Olympic
display highlighted, and tennis is one of their more successful sports. I hope
more people come next time when they host Austria in February, as it was tennis
of a very high quality. We’ve been very lucky to witness some top-drawer
sporting action so far in Astana, and I hope that more comes our way as winter
approaches.
Love you all
Matt
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