Novak Djokovic, Muhammad Ali & Ajit Wadekar: Champions of sports and humour

Maria Sharapova won the men’s title at the Australian Open a few days ago. Sharapova thrashed Rafael Nadal in the final.

What? It wasn’t Sharapova? Then it must have been Novak Djokovic. He does a great Sharapova impression. (“That’s sexist!” someone may just whine in today’s world.) Blessed with a keen eye and an elastic body, Djokovic produces, observational-cumphysical comedy. The eternal debate in tennis is who is the GOAT (Greatest of All Time). Is it Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal or Djokovic? There may be no clear winner in that race. But Djokovic is the undisputed FOAT (Funniest of All Time).

There are champions. And there are champions who are also humourists. Djokovic belongs in that category. And right on top of that list is another great. In fact, The Greatest. Muhammad Ali.

Ali lit up the sport with his personality and his limericks. His rhyming was childish but entertaining. And he used it to needle opponents.

Here’s Ali before the epic Thrilla in Manila in 1975 against his toughest rival, Joe Frazier, who he called a gorilla (and apologised for it later in his life).

Ali said the fight would be “a killa and a thrilla and a chilla, when I get that gorilla in Manila”.

Manila was the third battle between two great boxers who hated each other. They had split the first two. Excitement for the fight was unprecedented. Nearly 27,000 people crammed into a stadium meant for about 16,000. The fight was indeed a thrilla. Both men were about to collapse when Frazier’s coach threw in the towel after 14 rounds, his ward’s eyes swollen from the beating.

“We went to Manila as champions, Joe and me, and we came back as old men,” Ali said. They also returned with greater respect for each other. Ali said the battering he took from the granite like Frazier was “the closest thing to dyin’”.

But this is about Ali’s humour. And you sense the hand of karma in his great friendship with comedian Billy Crystal, till date among the funniest people in the world. “Little brother”, Ali always called Crystal. Once he told him, “Little brother, you looking good. Not as pretty as me, but good.”

Ali, Crystal and Howard Cosell, the eminent sports broadcaster of that time, formed a mischievous troika, always bantering, pulling each other’s leg. When Cosell died, Ali and Crystal wondered if their friend had his hairpiece on as he lay in the coffin. (“That’s inappropriate!” someone may just whine in today’s world.) Impersonations and humourists have enriched Indian cricket too.

Generations of cricketers mimicked the late Ajit Wadekar’s halting way of speaking and his habit of suffixing every second line with ‘re’, the Indian colloquialism (pronounced ‘ray’). Sunil Gavaskar, Wadekar’s teammate and neighbour and a very funny man himself, wrote in his obit for Wadekar that not a day went by without him saying “arre kaay re”, Wadekar style.

Ashish Nehra, among recent players, is funny. But he is not the level of Gavaskar. Or Vinod Kambli, who could be hilarious. By and large today’s players, as Hardik Pandya said in a certain interview, “Instagram me lage rehte hain.” Thank God for Djokovic.