Rohan Bopanna, the Indian doubles player, has raised the spirits of many ageing sports enthusiasts by becoming world doubles No 1 at the age of 43.

Bopanna – whose beard has turned grey and whose frame is burlier than it used to be – made the step up when he and his partner Matt Ebden won their Australian Open quarter-final on Wednesday.

“It hasn’t sunk in fully, to be honest,” said Bopanna, who is the oldest tennis player to become a world No 1. “I think it’s going to inspire a lot of people. I don’t think just in tennis. People all over the world, you know, being 40 and above.”

Unusually for a global sport, doubles tennis is something of a gerontocracy. Physicality is not an essential virtue, partly because you are only covering half the court, and partly because most rallies do not progress beyond the serve, the return and the first volley. Instead, the game rewards hand skills, technical mastery and tactical nous.

As these abilities tend to improve with age, Bopanna is one of five forty-somethings in the world’s top 20. You have to scroll down to No 17 before you find the first man under the age of 30.

“[This is a] huge milestone,” said Ebden, who is a relative stripling at 36. “It’s an incredible thing for Bops, especially at his age. This last year, it would have been easy for him to think, ‘Oh, I’ll just have another decent year and retire in the next couple of years,’ but I asked him to commit fully. This is a testament of all that, and an incredible effort.”

Bopanna was not exactly in a position of strength when his previous partner Matwe Middelkoop dumped him at the end of 2022, preferring to team up with fellow Dutchman Robin Haase the following season.

According to Bopanna’s own account, he looked around the player lounge at the Paris Masters – the final Masters 1000 event of 2022 – and saw Ebden, who found himself in a very similar situation. Tennis chemistry did the rest, and the new alliance won the Indian Wells title last March. Even though it is not a grand slam tournament, Indian Wells arguably draws the strongest doubles field of the year, because so many well-known singles players participate there.

Another challenge for Bopanna has been the state of his knees, which he says are devoid of cartilage. He puts his continuing fitness down to a serious yoga habit.

“I had four months sitting at home [during the Covid stoppage of 2020], trying to find out what to do,” he said on Wednesday. “That’s when I discovered yoga. I mean, it always was there in India but I never really tried it. Luckily I found the place where the teacher was right next to my house. So I could just walk during the pandemic, go about four times a week, do about 90-minute sessions. And I think yoga in a way not only strengthened my legs, my body, but also made me calmer. I don’t feel rushed on the tennis court. I think clearly there.”

Bopanna will be 43 years and 332 days old on Monday, when the rankings are updated. The previous record for the oldest doubles No 1 is held by the US’s Mike Bryan, who was 41 years and 76 days old when he was deposed.

In singles, Roger Federer is the record-holder, returning to the top of the chart at 36 years and 314 days and holding that position for a week. But Novak Djokovic, who was 36 years and 247 days old at the time of writing, looks poised to overtake that mark, as he has done with so many of Federer’s achievements.