Good girls don't make history: Sania

Sania Mirza appeared at a Wimbledon press conference wearing a pink T-shirt with the slogan: 'well-behaved women rarely make history'. Hours earlier in defeat on Wednesday, she showed the grit that has helped her attract sponsors and made her India's richest female athlete.Her current sponsorship income dwarfs what Bhupathi and fellow Indian Leander Paes made when they were the top doubles team around. Bhupathi won three Grand Slam doubles titles with Paes, and the pair received one of India's highest civilian honors, the Padma Shri, four years ago. "Endorsement-wise, she's gone leaps and bounds ahead of what we were doing," Bhupathi, now ranked 12th in doubles, said in an interview at Wimbledon. "India has never had an athlete at the world stage, so it's something new. The country has taken to her," he said.

Sania lost the opening set against US Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova on Centre Court and won the second-set tiebreak to force a decider. Trailing 5-2 in the final set, the 18-year-old Indian fought back to 5-4 only for Kuznetsova, sixth in the world, to serve out for victory after two hours, 17 minutes. Sania is ranked 75th. "She's got a presence and vitality to match her ability," Piyush Pandey, group president of Mumbai-based advertising company Ogilvy & Mather India, said in an interview. "She's got an attitude that young people love," says Mr Pandey.

In February at her home event at the Hyderabad Open, she became the first Indian woman to win a singles title, a victory that her agent Mahesh Bhupathi said sparked at least a dozen endorsement offers. Sania makes 2.6 million rupees ($60,000) a year in off-court earnings and has contracts with companies such as Hindustan Petroleum Corp, India's second-biggest state-owned refiner, and Tata Tea Ltd, the world's no 2 tea company. Although she trails Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, who earns at least $5 million a year from sponsors, Sania has helped make tennis the country's second-most popular sports.