Early promise comes to nought(almost!). Review on Sania Mirza

Around this time last year, this teenage sensation threatened to push cricket out of the limelight (and Team India didn't have much to crow about anyway then.). A title win before the Hyderabadi crowd was the cherry on the cake. Fastforward to the present and I believe Sania Mirza's fifteen minutes of fame have... just expired. What double-underlines my thoughts is this: this week she lost to one-time Wimbledon champ Richard Kraijeck's talented sis in three sets. DNA (Daily News Analysis for non-Mumbaiites) didn't even carry a report about the match. The results were just mentioned alongwith results of other matches in the tennis results summary. That's a far cry from the days when her performances were atleast right at the front of the sports pages, if not on the front page. Clearly, the media is already losing patience with her struggling performances. It will not be long before the general public too begins to forget about her. So, what went wrong? She won her first WTA title very early in her career, beat Svetlana Kuznetsova and Nadia Petrova in separate tournaments last year. Now, Sania Mirza exiting in the second round of any tournament is no longer news to me. Where did things take a turn for the worse? Some would blame it on the controversy over her skirts last year. But that's blown over, maybe even the clerics don't remember they said such things! Some would blame it on the media hype and the distraction of endorsements. Well, media glare and ad shoots do take away time from tennis practice, but it brings her valuable money to afford better equipments, better facilities, a better coach.... ah! The coach! The optimists would, like her coach, tell you that she has modified her game and needs to work on it for some time to get used to it. Maybe they are right. But in tennis, six months of teething problems can be a PROBLEM! Alright, you tell me, cut the crap! Get to the point, what do YOU think happened? I think things changed with her loss at Wimbledon to Svetlana Kuznetsova. Yes, she put up a fighting performance. But then, she was fighting not to lose a match she nearly won. She failed to wrap up the first set, having led it almost all the way, managed to win the second, but couldn't hang on in the third. All this against an opponent who she had easily seen off in the Dubai open. Remember: Mirza had a psychological advantage over Kuznetsova coming into the Wimbledon encounter. Not only had she beaten her earlier, she was still a dark horse in tennis. Competitiors didn't really know what to make of her, how to play her, what her weaknesses were. Had she won that tie, in all likelihood, her path to the quarterfinals would have been easy enough. And getting into the quarterfinals in Wimbledon would have boosted her rankings and helped her get an easy draw in subsequent tournaments. But she failed to move onto the the next level and after that, it was an uphill battle just holding onto her existing ranking. Persistent injuries didn't help either. OK, so she was still inexperienced. Dear, tennis doesn't give you time to learn - you either finish learning before entering the arena or you learn the hard way. What does the future hold for her? The immediate outlook is bleak. She most certainly won't do well in Roland Garros, not when she can't stop reminding everyone that clay is not her favourite surface. After that... there's Wimbledon, but now there's Hingis, Clistjers, Henin and back-in-form Williams sisters apart from the Russian army to be taken care for. I can't help feeling that unless she drastically lifts her performances, there's only way she can go from here - down. Still, here's three stars just because she has still retained an elegant game without those hideously ugly double-backhands. I would only too gladly rewrite this review and celebrate her success in tennis, if she had the results to prove it. Alas, in the (in)glorious tradition of most Indian sportsmen, she continues to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.