November

spOrTS
SANIA WINS
DOUBLES TITLE AT
WTA FINALS
»»
SPORTS BUREAU
India’s biggest name in women’s tennis
winning the World Tennis Association
(WTA) Doubles final with Cara Black
in Singapore. Five titles on the Tour
this year, a Grand Slam win at the US
Open, an Asian Games gold, Sania
Mirza will be realistically India’s biggest
hope for an Olympic medal in tennis
at Rio De Janeiro two years from now.
Twelve years ago, it had taken Krishna
Bhupathi less than 45 minutes to realise
that Sania Mirza was the undisputed
owner of India’s most outstanding
forehand in tennis. Bhupathi Sr’s keen
eye had spotted this wicked weapon in
another prodigy, a shot that could be hit
clean and accurate on any surface. What
he was unprepared for, though, was how,
by the end of that first training session
in Hyderabad, Mirza, then a 14-yearold,
had ended up on backslapping
terms with him. Their 40-year age gap
had gotten scrambled as he realised
that neither was the teenager’s forehand
dainty, nor would her demeanour ever
aim for demure. “That day, I knew this
girl was something else,” he says, with a
touch of pride.
“In our part of the world, when kids are
supremely confident, they are labelled
arrogant. If you don’t bend down to
what everyone says, it’s considered to be
bad attitude. Coaches discourage selfconfidence
in kids, and that hampers
them when they have to stand on the
court and match strokes with the big
players,” Mirza says. Critics expect her
to go bulldozing winners on the court
one moment, and turn into a docile
53