A glorious chapter and illustrious career came to an end in Indian sport on Tuesday when Sania Mirza played her last match as a professional tennis player at the WTA Dubai Duty Free Championships. Sania, who is one of the greatest tennis players to ever emerge from India, capped off her glorious career with a first-round loss, losing the contest in straight sets to her American partner Madison Keys in Dubai on Tuesday. Sania and Keys lost 4-6, 0-6 to the formidable Russian pairing of Vernokia Kudermetova and Liudmila Samsonova in exactly one hour. Veronika, 25, is ranked 11th in singles and number five in doubles, while Liudmila is number 13 in the world in doubles.
Just a month ago, Sania played her last Grand Slam and finished runner-up at the Australian Open with her compatriot Rohan Bopanna.
Now based in Dubai, Sania would have expected a dream finish in her second home, but ran into a strong Russian pair who cut short her stay at the final tournament of her career in which she won 43 WTA doubles titles and one trophy. of individual.
Success wasn’t the only highlight of her nearly two-decade career, as unwarranted controversies dogged Sania throughout.
At times he remained unfazed and kept going, achieving many firsts. He sometimes broke himself to the extent that he considered not playing in India.
It was when she had to prove her love and loyalty for India after being accused of disrespecting the tricolor during the 2008 Hopman Cup in Australia.
Probably the worst taunt she was hurled at was when she was called Pakistan’s daughter-in-law because of her wedding to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik. This was after she was chosen by Telangana to be the state ambassador for her.
All this, despite his inspiring success on the pitch.
After all, how many from India became top 30 tennis players? How many excellent in Majors? How many became number one in the world in all formats? How many won the year-end championships? In men’s tennis, only a handful and in women’s tennis, only Sania.
And there isn’t a player in sight who seems even close to what Sania has achieved. The gap is huge, and the best after Sania are also gradually fading away.
Sania, 36, who turned professional in 2003, comes out of competitive tennis with six Grand Slam titles, including three women’s doubles with Swiss legend Martina Hingis.
He won two of his three mixed doubles with compatriot Mahesh Bhupathi (2009 Australian Open and 2012 French Open). She won the US Open trophy with Bruno Soares.
However, success eluded him on the biggest stage: the Olympics. He came close to winning bronze at the 2016 Rio Games, but lost the tiebreaker to Bopanna.
In the last match of her career, breaks were traded at a rapid pace in the first set that closed out at 4-4. From there, Kudermetova and Samsonova broke the pairing of Sania and Keys once again for a 5-4 lead, putting themselves in a position from which they could take the set.
They did it quite comfortably, losing a point in the tenth game.
Sania and her partner broke in the first game of the second set and after that there was one-way traffic as they got hit.
.With PTI inputs
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