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Tuesday 15 January 2013

Prologue to the interview of Aljaz Bedene

Sometimes some things just happen. You had never though that those things would happen, in fact you had never dreamt about them. I always wondered how do you reach a player, if you have to take an autograph, let alone an interview. I had never thought I would be actually interviewing a player. Yes, by saying that I admit that I have never been to a live match, however, I have been following it on T.V and via live streaming for a long time now. I always wondered how to reach players. Thanks to twitter, I got the opportunity to talk to one of the rising tennis players, Aljaz Bedene, Slovenian tennis player.

I saw him for the first time when I saw his matches at the ATP challenger tour last year. He lost the semi-finals at the hands of Adrian Ungar. He made headlines this year in Chennai when he ousted the 6th seed and world no.56 Robin Hasse in the second round and no.4 seed and world on. 17 Stanislas Wawrinka in the quarter-finals. He met world no.9 and second seed Janko Tipsarevic in the semi-finals. Ee won the first set 6-4, but lost the next 2 sets and the match, the final score being 6-4 2-6 2-6.

I got the opportunity to interview him yesterday. It was my first interview of any sort, my first interaction with a tennis player. Nerves definitely had to play their role, first I could not think of any interview questions I had to ask him, then when I got done with the questions, I downloaded skype and the video recorder with it. But if it all went perfect in first go, what sort of interview it would have been.

It all started with the damn skype video recorder not working, and then when I decided to let the recorder go, I got on the call with Bedene and the micro-phone stopped working. I could hear him, but alas, he could not. I can't thank Steve Jobs enough for saving my day at that time, for it was the skype in my I-phone that saved my day. Had it not been the case, I don't know what would have happened. Thanks apple again for saving my day.

I was so excited when I came to know that I will be interviewing Aljaz Bedene, I could not believe it actually. It was sort of a mile-stone (it was a spot on description of the moment by one of my colleagues and team member) in my very small blogging career. I even updated it as my face-book status.


O! By the way, I am an audit internee, and when my team came to know of the news, they were all so excited. We planned on doing the interview together via Skype, everyone wanted to ask questions, but you never know what is in store. Due to some reasons, all the team members had to leave and I was left alone to do the interview.

Overall, it was a great experience, while interviewing Aljaz Bedene, I realised that tennis players are also humans like us, they have these little things in their lives also that make them happy, that make them sad, that make them want to shout out loud with excitement.

Unfortunately Bedene lost his first round match at Australian Open today in 4 sets to German player Benjamin Becker 6-4 3-6 5-7 6-7, but here is to the hoping that he goes on to live up to his potential and realise his dreams.

I had planned on publishing the interview, but I guess going on about the excitement that I had, just went on for too long, so you people will have to wait for the interview. Sorry, but I guess, I had to get all this excitement thing out. Phew, now that it is out, I can start working on publishing the interview.

Stay tuned for the interview.

4 comments:

  1. Nice! Waiting for the interview! Have you got any analysis of his performances and wins?

    For your blog: Add some pics in the articles and make ur blog a bit colorful

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  2. Thanks Usman for dropping by :) No, not yet, but I will for sure do an analysis of his loss at the Australian Open. Hope to get the interview published today :)

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  3. Well, this is what you call excitement :-)! So,how did you come across this guy,did you just start to follow him a while ago and chatted with him via Twitter? I like social networks because many things, like getting in touch with the player, are now achievable for an ordinary person whereas in the past you'd have to work in the media to be able to do that.

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  4. Yup, it was great Marine :) I started following him when he played challenger tour final last year, though he went out in semi-finals, I liked his game. He had some good results in Chennai this year, but unfortunately lost in 1R in Aussie Open.
    Yup, chatted with him on twitter and asked for Interview :)
    I guess, top players still charge for interviews. I never expected him to reply, and I too thought he will charge for Interview.

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