Asian Window

The blizzard of off-court controversies into which Sania Mirza has been dragged cannot lay her low, writes her uncle Maseeh Rahman in the Indian Express

“Come on. Keep fighting!” For a while on Show Court 3 at the Australian Open on Thursday, it seemed as if Sania Mirza was going to buckle under the pressure and surrender. After winning the first set 6-1 in her typically aggressive style, her game had faltered, and she looked pensive as she submitted 4-6 in the second. Now she was down 1-3 in the decider, and her Swiss-Hungarian opponent Timea Bacsinszky threatened to run away with the match.

The exhortation from the players’ box had come from her father, Imran Mirza, and it had sounded like part instruction, part encouragement. Like many Indian families, the Mirzas are extremely close-knit, and Imran has played a pivotal role in Sania’s emergence as a world-class tennis player. I still remember my surprise when, visiting her house in Hyderabad many years ago, I discovered that Imran and his wife Naseema were about to set off for Thiruvanthapuram in their beat-up Maruti Esteem so that Sania could participate in a tennis tournament. They couldn’t afford to fly.

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