A hat tip to Sania Mirza, India's 1st truly mainstream woman sports star

A press conference after a loss in a sporting event has often served as a temple of epiphany. Retirements, realisations and remembrance have all been conducted at this altar of reflection. Many have used it to spout poetry, others to proffer abuse. Sania Mirza used it to speak plainly and clearly.

“I've decided this will be my last season,” she said, after losing in the first round of the women’s doubles at the Australian Open. No drama, no theatre. It could be a year-long farewell tour, but of that she wasn’t sure. “I'm taking it week by week, not sure if I can last the season, but I want to.”

Twenty years after she burst into India’s conscience with a bronze in the mixed doubles at the 2002 Asian Games, India’s first truly mainstream female sports star had decided to move on. This decision wasn’t poetic, just pragmatic. “[I] still feel I can play well, go deep into tournaments and all that. But beyond this season I don’t see my body do it either. It’s beat.” And so it was done, pressed, folded and filed — the end of an era.

Nineties’ kids still talk about the Lee-Hesh hegemony (Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi to the uninitiated), but if you were growing up in the 2000s, that charm had long faded away. The new kid on the block, from Hyderabad, a girl with panache and passion who said it like she felt it, caught the abuse and the adulation — and mind you, there was a lot of both when she was coming through — and tossed it back calmly. 

Consider this. On January 20, when the Indian women’s football team take to the pitch to face Iran in their opening game of the AFC Women’s Asian Cup, they will feature a 16-year-old in the squad. Hemam Shilky Devi was born in November 2005. In February of that very year, Sania Mirza won her maiden WTA singles title at her hometown tournament, the Hyderabad Open. She ended that season as the WTA’s newcomer of the year.

The year prior, the award went to Tatiana Golovin (retired 2008). The year after, Agnieszka Radwanska (retired 2018). Go a year further back and there’s Maria Sharapova (retired 2020). And then 2007’s Agnes Szavay (retired 2013). Sandwiched between them is India’s Sania Mirza — even if this country hasn’t always been kind enough to call her that. It was a time of Sania Mania, when her breakthrough performances were followed by religious diktats. Her every move calculated and considered by analysts who knew less about her even as they saw more of her.

It was a strange time. Inasmuch as India embraced its breakthrough female sports star, it also pushed her away. Her choice of partner (tennis and otherwise), choice of attire (tennis or otherwise), choice of coach, were analysed with a gender lens that was outdated then but still exists today. She broke a way through, not because of how she played but because of all that she played against. Saina Nehwal’s on-court attire was never dissected because Sania Mirza's already had been — the badminton star afforded a respect hard won by her Hyderabadi predecessor.  

Injuries, a lack of coaching support and even perhaps a pragmatic realisation that the doubles game offered better dividends turned that swashbuckling, singles star with a big forehand into a doubles specialist. It also turned a pop star into a classical maestro. From being a tempestuous player she became one able to choose the correct moments to win matches. From being marketed as a young, flashy, sportswoman for a new India, to one who spoke about things clearly, patiently and never unnecessarily. 

At the peak of the first wave of the pandemic, called by the All India Tennis Association and Sports Authority of India for a webinar, Mirza was asked about the growth of women’s sport in the country in the decades since she burst through. 

By this time, she’d been long married to her Pakistani cricketer partner, birthed a son, won six Grand Slam titles, come close to a medal at the Olympics, set up her own tennis academy, taken maternity leave from the sport, and moved away from billboards and hoardings and adverts to panels, and advisory boards. In the years of her ascent, India had found three women Olympic medallists across three different sports — more would follow in Tokyo. Her legacy was secure, even if others chose to deny it. 

"I take huge pride in the fact that outside cricket, the biggest sports stars are women athletes,” she said. “If you see magazines, billboards, you find women sports stars. That is a huge step, a signal that things have changed, but we have miles to go before we reach the point where a girl picks up boxing gloves, or a badminton racquet or says 'I want to be a wrestler’. <Log kya kahenge> (what will people say) has killed more dreams than anything else.”

Praise followed by caution, followed by calculated critique. Sania Mirza at her best.