Cilic believes Djokovic Australian Open deportation treatment was unfair and 'disasterous'

Like many other tennis players, Marin Cilic found Novak Djokovic's treatment last year terrible but he hailed him a great champion for coming back this year.

Many players spoke out against the way Djokovic was handled in Australia although quite a few of them stayed silent as well. Djokovic elected to return to Australia in pursuit of his 10th victory there and Cilic praised him for doing that as he called the 2022 Australian Open an emotional affair:

"Hats off to Novak because he went through a very big emotional difficulty in that January of last year. Definitely, whatever it was, it wasn't fair to him, absolutely not. And that was disastrous for him as an athlete to go through those things."

He also hailed him as a great champion for the bounceback year he had after that event:

"It's just extremely difficult and proves again that he's got that stellar ability to keep his focus, to keep his mentality there up. And then still winning a Grand Slam this last year. So hats off to him, managed to play great tennis and a really amazing end of the season. Fantastic he played after the US Open, he played in Tel Aviv and also in Kazakhstan and Bercy, he was playing amazing tennis."