Chennai: Sania Mirza lost to Svetlana Kuznetsova. Who cares? Sania is a winner. She comes through as a vivacious teenager who will remain a youth icon for long even as her ground strokes leave some opponents bewildered on tennis courts around the world circuit. More significantly, Sania displays a certain aggression on court which makes her tennis well worth watching.
She is no tyro, no weeping Indian maiden with a litany of complaints about the system, as if we were still in the era of state support as in former East Germany where the envelopes also came with doses of steroid.
Yes, Sania is a winner in the new open era of Indian sport, the leading representative of a confident India with a free market that also supports its sportspeople, especially those with the charisma to bring a return to the sponsor.
There is a certain simplicity and straightforwardness to her tennis, too. She is not the stereotypical Indian player with the assumed cerebral prowess and the wrist work to suit the image of the oriental charmer, capable of dainty strokes but lacking the killer punch to make it all the way.
Her flat strokes without great dependence on top spin make fast courts her best surface. Wimbledon suits her game best. On the revered turf of Centre Court, on her maiden appearance there, she traded shots with a player several rungs up the rankings and was within a winning stroke or two of taking the decider long into the Indian night. An outstanding feature of her tennis is her aggression, her forehand being a thing of beauty even as it packs an awesome wallop.
Whether she wins or loses, she represents greater value in sporting competition than anyone who beats the Minardis home in the high tech, yet mechanical world of Formula One.
She may suffer from ankle problems and was said to have spent a troubled night before Wednesday's match with a stomach muscle strain. But she is not the sort to point to those weaknesses. The vibes that come out of her honest, teenage torrent of words are positive. They reveal clarity of thinking that will take her atop the razzamatazz of the world of hyperbole she has perforce to perform in.
The attacking player must suffer from a deliberate shunning of percentage play. But that she dares to keep attacking is what makes her a very unusual Indian player. She may not be the type to listen to advice like "hang in there, girl". She likes to make things happen. Some day, somewhere, such belligerence will pay off, in a good week when fitness is close to 100 percent, Sania is capable of a huge win.
At one point in the match against Svetlana, she was angry enough with herself as to bang her racket into the ground to earn a code of conduct warning.
Even that said a lot. She has the rage, she wants to win and that shows how different this new generation of Indian sportspeople is. So captivating is she on the television screen that she will not suffer from lack of product lines to endorse.
She will be the face of Indian sport on the distaff side, and she has the pretty face to be that, too. More importantly, she has the strokes to send the pulse racing and she dares to play them freely.
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