Sania-Mattek In Semis Of East West Bank Classic

Sania Mirza and Bethanie Mattek overcame a fighting Russian pair of Elena Vesnina and Vera Zvonareva to book a semifinal berth in the $600,000 WTA East West Bank Classic tournament.

The Indo-American pair, seeded second, pipped the Russian duo 6-3, 1-6, 10-8 in one hour and 14 minutes in the quarter-finals of the Tier II hard court event last night.

Sania-Mattek did not drop their serve even once in the first set and converted two of the four breakpoints to take the lead.

However, they surprisingly lost the momentum and allowed Vesnina-Zvonareva combination to overpower them in the next.

The Indo-American dropped their serve thrice in the second set and squandered the only breakpoint also.

However, they got their elements together in the tie-breaker to prevail over the Russians and move to the last four stage, where they will face winner of the match between Eva Hrdinova/Vladimira Uhlirova and Ayumi Morita/Ai Sugiyama.

Sania Down One Spot to No. 33

Out-of-action Sania Mirza was down one spot to 33rd in the singles chart but held on to her 19th position in the doubles’ list in the WTA rankings released on Monday. Mahesh Bhupathi remained static, while Leander Paes dropped a couple of rungs in the ATP doubles rankings.

Bhupathi stayed at 11th despite he and Mark Knowles (Bahamas) pulling out in the second round of last week’s Munich Open.

Sania Pulls Out Of Miami Masters

A right wrist injury has forced India's Sania Mirza to withdraw from the $2.1 million Sony Ericsson Open tennis tournament in Miami.

Sania, seeded 29th in the Masters event, had been battling the injury since her pre-quarterfinal appearance in the Pacific Life Open last week.

The 21-year-old was handed a bye in the first round along with other seeds and was to take on wildcard Sabine Lisicki of Germany in the second round.

But injury forced her to pull out of the event on Wednesday, giving Mariya Koryttseva of Ukraine a place in the main draw.

The 'Sania' Effect On Commodities Market

If there is one sports person in India who has acquired the status of a Bollywood star, it undoubtedly is Sania Mirza. Still below sixties in world ranking, she is yet to reach the pinnacle of her chosen profession.

Yet she is already a talking point worldwide. Even the Chinese media has included Sania Mirza among the world’s all-time ‘Top 10 Tennis Beauties’ along with Russian star Maria Sharapova and former player Gabriela Sabatini.

The Chinese media portrayed her wearing a traditional Indian dress as well as donning a skimpy tennis attire, a picture apparently shot during a Grand Slam Championship.

May be because of her good looks, her often `controversial attire’ or her career prospects, she is already a hot commodity on internet. Blogsites dedicated to Sania have appeared and get monumental page views. You have everything from sania wallpapers, posters and other hot downloads.

The Sania Effect on Commodities?

When we analyse this we can get parallel examples from the real world of commodities—all the expensive ones such as oil and gold.

Tennis is an expensive profession, hard for anyone to get into and equally difficult for anyone to get the top. So is cricket. But in cricket there are already so many players who have made it to the top and more hopefuls on the queue.

One may wonder why leading FMCG companies want to feature Sania even when they were never interested in Vijay Amritraj, Prakash Padukone, our own Payyoli Express- P T Usha, Shiny Wilson, or Karnam Malleswari. Or our tennis veterans of yesteryears, Ramanathan Krishnan, Ramesh Krishnan or for that matter anyone else.

The closest any athlete came to becoming a star was Ashwini Nanchappa but her film forays were not successful at all, despite her good looks and talent.

In the case of Sania, her good looks and occasional upset wins were sufficient to catapult her to a hot brand in India, but not necessarily in the global arena where you have Maria Sharpova, Anna Kournikova or Martina Hingis, still others. Therefore, she is just a hot commodity in the global market.

In addition to that her dress and attire and the controversies surrounding it also helped her to be in the limelight and nobody focused too much on her winnings and losings.

One analyst Mark Dampier wrote in The Independent, UK that right now it is wise to go for gold because nothing else is glittering in an analysis of commodity markets.

The same could apply for Sania. For companies that want her to endorse their products or the excited bloggers, there isn’t anyone as glittering as Sania around. Again, ad agencies go for endorsements because it is less risky than thinking up off-beat `creatives’ which may or may not ring cash registers for their clients.

Her stature would continue until more and more young girls take to tennis and become successful in international circuits. Again with a high barrier—the expenses involved in taking to tennis, she is not likely to be displaced from her throne soon.

It was Amritraj’s Brittannia Foundation that helped budding youngsters like Leander Paes and several others to enter this sport.

For Sania, nursing an injury after a major tournament, all these sponsorships and adulation could help her perform better. You need money to take part in tournaments, hiring coaches and keeping fit.

For the time being, the nation and all the sponsors have invested in a hope called Sania just as investors bet on stocks hoping their value appreciates over time.

Look at Coke, which uses Sania’s endorsement. It continues to be a global leader in beverages because of its closely guarded secret of which cinnamon and nutmeg are ingredients.

Manny economists talk of `scarcity value’ of a commodity as the one determinant of the price of a commodity. If indeed, OPEC can create scarcity value by not producing more oil, international prices of oil shoots up. You cannot dig everywhere and get oil.

Whether it is coal, gold, oil, coal or for that matter any hot commodity it is confluence of high entry costs into industry, `scarcity value’ and non-availability of some other alternative that drives up prices. Call this the `Sania’ effect of commodities market.

Source: http://www.commodityonline.com/

Sania Slips To 32

Sania Mirza slipped out of the top 30, losing three positions to be 32nd in the latest WTA rankings issued on Monday.

Sania, who plays at the Qatar Open this week, however, maintained her doubles ranking at 23.

India’s second best woman player, the U.S.-based Sunitha Rao, had her singles ranking intact at 182.

In the ATP list, the doubles duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi have maintained their top-20 positions at 15 and 19 respectively.

Bangalore Open: Sania Drops Out

Given the game of competitive intolerance that's often encouraged by politicians - which these columns have been warning about - something like this was waiting to happen. Sania Mirza has declined to play in the $600,000 Bangalore Open, where she would have been a big draw along with the Americans Serena and Venus Williams. She says she has no problems representing India, it's just that there are too many controversies dogging her whenever she plays in the country.

She has been vilified because she shot an advertisement on the premises of Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid, because she allegedly supported pre-marital sex, because the camera angle at which a certain photograph of her watching a match was taken made it appear as if she was pointing her feet at the tricolour. By becoming Asia's top player and world number 29 in the WTA rankings, she has done India proud. If she is to excel in her game, she can't afford to be distracted by such matters as whether the length of her skirt meets the exacting specifications of religious clerics.

People who are in the limelight because of their achievements - running the gamut from the 21-year-old Sania Mirza to the 92-year-old M F Husain - are all too often becoming targets of overheated nationalist or religious sentiment. One of the country's greatest living painters, Husain has allegedly disgraced it by painting a nude goddess, when classical Indian art is full of nudity and eroticism. Cases have been filed against Husain in Rajkot, Indore, Bhopal, Haridwar and Pandharpur in Maharashtra. Faced with the ignominy of having to travel the length and breadth of the country fighting frivolous cases against him, Husain chose to stay abroad. It's small mercy that the Supreme Court has now amalgamated the cases against him and transferred them to a Delhi court.

The apex court has wisely given a quiet burial to the case against N R Narayana Murthy. What the professional takers of offence had against Narayana Murthy was that an instrumental version of the national anthem was played at Infosys premises in Mysore in April last year, instead of a vocal version. What applies to Sania holds true for Narayana Murthy as well - if the latter had focused his energies on being a master of protocol then he wouldn't have been software king. Frivolous cases like this ought to be quashed outright instead of making their way to the Supreme Court, which should warn courts down the line that it would not entertain such frivolity; and nor should they, if the country's already scarce legal resources and time were not to be wasted further.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Editorial/

Sania, Bopanna Bow Out In Doubles

India's Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna fell by the wayside at the Australian Open on Monday.

Sixth seeds Sania and Alicia Molik of Australia lost 5-7, 3-6 to Victoria Azarenka of Belarus and Israel's Shahar Peer, seeded 12th, in the third round of women's doubles.

Sania is still in the running in the mixed doubles event with Mahesh Bhupathi. The Indian duo face a tough task against second seeds USA's Lisa Raymond and Simon Aspelin of Sweden on Tuesday

Bopanna and Rajeev Ram's winning run at the Grand Slam ended when they were beaten in the third round of the men's doubles.

The Indo-US pair, which had scalped fifth seeds Leander Paes and Australian partner Paul Hanley 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(6) on Sunday, lost to Jeff Coetzee and Wesley Moodie of South Africa 6-3, 4-6, 3-6.

But the Indian challenge in the men's doubles stayed alive, as Mahesh Bhupathi and partner Mark Knowles of the Bahamas advanced to the quarter-finals, beating Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski of Poland. The sixth seeds won 6-3, 6-2.

They will take on the top seeded brother duo of Bob and Mike Bryan next.

Hard To Please A Billion People: Sania

Fighting one controversy after another ever since her rise to prominence has taken a toll on Sania Mirza's morale and even forced her to consider quitting the game but the Indian tennis ace says she has gradually learnt not to get rattled by off-court furores.

"Yeah, it is painful... You know you can never get used to things like that. Of course, it does hurt you, because you are playing for your country," Sania said reflecting on the controversies ranging from her on-court attire to a recent court case relating to allegedly disrespecting the Indian national flag during the Hopman Cup.

The 21-year-old said she has understood that she would never be able to please everyone in her more than a billion strong nation.

"1.2 billion, I mean, there are going to be a couple of people that don't like you. That's very hard, but it's very hard for everyone to like you as well," she said.

"But I don't take it personally, to be honest. They obviously have good enough reasons for whatever they're doing," she quipped.

Sania, who crashed out in the third round of the ongoing Australian Open after a straight set loss to former Wimbledon champion Venus Williams, said despite the controversies she remains focussed on her game.

"If I wasn't, then I wouldn't be playing these tournaments, I wouldn't be feeling the way I feel about my country, and I would not be living in India right now with all this," Sania said.

"I would have moved out a long time ago, but I'm proud to live in India and whatever I am I am because I have grown up in India," she added.

But the Hyderabadi ace admits that her young age makes it difficult for her to understand what the fuss is all about whenever fatwas are issued against her for wearing "revealing" on-court attire or any other petty issue.

Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/

Sania Advances To Third Round

Sania Mirza survived a brief lapse of concentration before advancing to the third round of the Australian Open on Thursday with a 6-1, 4-6, 7-5 victory against Switzerland's Timea Bacsinszky.

Sania started off in smashing fashion as she took the first set 6-1 in just 22 minutes, but the Swiss world number 119 fought back in the second set.

The 31st-seeded Indian also didn't help her cause with a string of unforced errors in the second set, but things improved in the decider. Sania continued to toil in the third set and broke Bacsinszky's serve in the 12th game to win it 7-5 and advance to the third round.

The 21-year-old next faces eight seed American Venus Williams for a place in the last 16. Venus was also made to work hard in both sets before beating Frenchwoman Camille Pin 7-5 6-4.