Leander Paes became the most successful doubles player in Davis Cup history when he partnered Rohan Bopanna to beat China's Mao-Xin Gong and Di Wu in Tianjin on Saturday. Here are some extraordinary numbers that capture his feat.
12
Leander Paes has had 12 doubles partners in Davis Cup history, starting with Zeeshan Ali back in 1990. Since then, Paes' other partners have been, chronologically, Ramesh Krishnan, Gaurav Natekar, Mahesh Bhupathi, Fazaluddin Syed, Vishal Uppal, Sunil Kumar Sipaeya, Rohan Bopanna, Purav Raja, Sanam Singh, Saketh Myneni and Vishnu Vardhan, with whom Paes played his last doubles rubber, against New Zealand in February 2017.
25
Total number of victories that Leander Paes has had in Davis Cup doubles rubbers playing alongside Mahesh Bhupathi, the most among his 43 wins. The pair of Paes and Bhupathi lost only two matches playing together in Davis Cup, and their number of wins is bettered by just three pairs -- Nicola Pietrangeli and Orlando Sirola of Italy (34), Romanians Ilie Nastase and Ion Tiriac (27), and Khalid Al Nabhani and Mohammed Al Nabhani of Oman (26).
56
Since making his Davis Cup debut against Japan in 1990, Paes was playing in his 56th tie for India in the doubles rubber against China. While this is an all-time record for India, it is still a long way off the overall record -- 93 ties for San Marino's Domenico Vicini.
7
Leander Paes has seven wins in the fifth set in Davis Cup doubles, the joint second-best record in the history of the competition behind Croatian Ivan Ljubicic's eight. Other players with seven successful five-setter wins in Davis Cup doubles are Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram of Israel, Nicola Pietrangeli of Italy and Andrei Olhovskiy of Russia. For Paes to catch up with Ljubicic, India would have to return to the World Group for 2019 and for him to still be playing, since the experimental rules for 2018 have left zonal playoffs with best-of-three set matches.
1972
Nicola Pietrangeli's 42nd and final doubles win in the Davis Cup came on May 21 on clay in San Benedetto, Italy almost exactly a year before Leander Paes was born. Pietrangeli partnered Adriano Panatta to beat Fred Hemmes and Jan Hordijk of the Netherlands in four sets in their Europe Zone A quarter-final. The semi-final defeat to Romania later that year was Pietrangeli's last Davis Cup appearance, at age 38.
24
These were the consecutive doubles rubbers won by Leander Paes playing alongside Mahesh Bhupathi, also a world record. Paes and Bhupathi won their first Davis Cup doubles match playing together against Croatia's Sasa Hirszon and Goran Ivanisevic in 1995, before losing their next two rubbers in 1996, against Dutchmen Jacco Eltingh and Paul Haarhuis and then Jonas Bjorkman and Nicklas Kulti of Sweden. Paes-Bhupathi's winning streak began with a straight-sets win over Martin Damm and Petr Korda of the Czech Republic in 1997 and stayed unbroken after they played their last doubles rubber together, another win in three sets over Marcelo Melo and Bruno Soares of Brazil in 2010.