Monday, September 5th, 2005
Dear Sania
We’ll be watching you.
One billion Indians will tune in 36 minutes from now (this is being written at 10.54pm on Sunday, 4th September) to watch you play Maria Sharapova in the fourth round of the US Open. Never mind that all Indian households don’t have television. Never mind that of the ones that do have television, only a fraction has cable and satellite coverage. Never mind that, unlike cricket, it is unlikely Doordarshan will carry tennis coverage.
One billion is a nice, round figure and we’ll leave it at that. We don’t want to be rational. This is no time to be rational. If rational is what we wanted to be, we would have been in bed by 11pm. We wouldn’t be up watching the fuzzy telecast on Ten Sports. The telecast is pretty poor, Sania. This once, we’ll make an allowance for your black socks. They help us see through the snow.
If rational is what we wanted to be, we would have tucked in after our Sunday dinner. We would tell ourselves that this girl, this teen tennis sensation, this protagonist of Sania mania is all alliteration and rhyme and more a creature of media hype than tennis fact.
You are a media dream. As more newspapers and TV channels are being launched and as more of them go IPO, they are tending to pass off form for content. So, more than your tennis, we get to read and hear about your t-shirts, your nosering, your earrings. One newspaper even has a jhumka rating for your performances. (The same newspaper broke the story about the Salman tapes to mark its Mumbai launch. The same newspaper recently went IPO at Rs 530 and, on listing, soared to a high of Rs 731 before settling at Rs 558.This, Sania, is one of the better newspapers in the market. Like we said, this is no time to be rational.)
If rational is what we wanted to be, we would say this girl is as much a creation of Hyderabadi biryani as she is of the Bhupathi academy (if we have our facts right and you are, indeed, from his academy). That she is too podgy to be a international star of any merit in any sport. The ankle injury, we put down to the podginess. The stomach cramps? That’s even closer home, is it not?
We really thought far too much was made of your reaching the third round of the Australian Open. We thought it was wrong to be so euphoric about getting to round three of a Grand Slam, never mind if you were the first Indian woman to do so. PT Usha was the first Indian woman to lose an Olympic medal by 1/100th of a second, but she lost. You were the first Indian woman to lose the third round of the French. But face it, you lost.
Yes, your ranking jumped from 166 to 132. That was a remarkable jump but was it really worth a celebration? Number 132? Is that an achievement? Do YOU know who the number 132 player in any sport is? Precisely.
At the French Open, you crashed out in the first round. At Wimbledon, you bowed out in the second round and we knew this is what would become of celebrating your third round entries. Ironically, your ad campaigns went on right through to the finals of Wimbledon. One of them featured you struggling to play the violin and concluded Sania Mirza ko violin bajana nahi aata.
We were tempted to add tennis khelna bhi nahi aata.
But here we are. Patiently waiting for Hewitt and Dent to finish their match (which has painfully entered the fifth set) and for you and Sharapova to come on. We still have the flag we bought at a traffic light on Independence Day and we’ll be waving it at the tele.
If you were blown out of the water by the world number seven in January, what chance do you stand against the world number one? All we know is what Dinah Washington sang: What a Difference a Day Makes.
If you make it past Maria tonight, we would love to see you win on Saturday, the 10th. Just as we would love to see Agassi win on the 11th. We know Federer has beaten him earlier this year. We also know that age is not exactly on his side and players like Nadal who are nearly half his age have whipped him.
Andre, too, at one time used to be about streaked hair and earrings and flashy t-shirts. Then, he realised that winning speaks louder than psychedelic clothes and went on to become the only man in recent history to win all four Slams.
We are sentimental about him winning the US Open on the fourth anniversary of September 11. We know it’s a big ask. But as you’ve gathered by now, we are not a rational people.