Staying World No. 1 is the real challenge: Sania Mirza
Winning 10 WTA titles, including two Grand Slams (women’s doubles) Wimbledon and US Open – and finishing the year as the No. 1 doubles player in the world, Sania Mirza did her bit to take Hyderabad to the world. The 29-year-old is proud of what she achieved in what was the best year of her career.
“It’s been an incredible year. Hingis and I being rated as the World No. 1 women’s doubles pair by the ITF is something that I will cherish for a long, long time to come,” says the tennis ace reflecting on a fantabulous 2015.
She is quick to add, “Reaching the top is one thing and staying there is another thing. It is going to be really tough to better the performances of this year.”
In many ways Sania embodies the new go-getting, globe-trotting Hyderabadi who will not settle for anything less than the best in the world, but flaunts her daughter-of-the-soil credentials in chaste Dakhni, mimicking Saleem Pheku from Angrez in dubsmash videos.
Hailing from a family that’s been living in the city for more than a century, her Hyderabadi credentials are undisputable. Her great, great grandfather, Aziz Mirza served as the home secretary under the Nizam in the early 1900s. Great grandfather Ahmed Mirza worked as the chief engineer who oversaw the construction of the Gandipet dam. Grandfather, Zaffer Mirza worked as an engineer in Nizam’s Railways.
It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say you could take Sania out of Hyderabad but can’t take Hyderabad out of her. She takes “more than 300 flights” a year to compete in tennis tournaments around the world, yet “enjoys nothing more than coming home at least once in three months”.
The tennis ace minces no words when talking about her love for the city. “There is no place like home. No matter where I go in the world, I have this urge to come back home, sleep on my bed, in my room,” says Sania, who invariably ends up gorging on a take away of her favourite biryani on the way back home from the airport.
What’s more! Sania Mirza is the ‘most searched non-cricketing sportsperson of the year’, according to a search engine company’s 2015 Year in Review for India.
That explains why Sania was voted as the Hyderabad Times Most Desirable Woman 2015. In fact she’s made Hyderabad more desirable. “I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I am playing really well. When you are confident, believe in yourself and have the ability to fight all odds, I guess you become desirable,” she told us. True that!