Mumbai, December 30: Till not so long ago, Saina was an anagram of Sania. And not just alphabetically. Both were from Hyderabad, teenage successes. The shuttler, in fact, was often confused with her more glamorous, established counterpart.
Over the last couple of years, however, Saina Nehwal has come out of Sania Mirza’s shadow. And, in the midst of convenient cliches like ‘cricket-mad nation’, the 19-year-old has become the toast of the nation and DNA Sportperson of the Year.
We opened the voting lines to our readers, who responded in droves. Nehwal, with 28% votes, received the accolade ahead of cricket heavyweights such as Virender Sehwag (18%), Mahendra Singh Dhoni (15%) and Gautam Gambhir (11%). World billiards and snooker champion Pankaj Advani pulled in 8% votes, just ahead of Olympic bronze-medallist boxer Vijender Singh (6%). It was neck-and-neck between tennis players Somdev Devvarman (5%) and Leander Paes (4%).
Not only had Nehwal bested the more visible stars, she did it in a year which has been rather ordinary by her standards, barring one magical week mid-June.
She was below-par at the two big events at home – the India Open and the World Championships; she lost a few matches to unfancied opponents and was laid low by chickenpox and viral fever. Yet, it was in the demonstration of what she was capable of at the Indonesian Open that 2009 will be recalled in years to come as a landmark year in Indian sport.
It was not just that she beat two Chinese players on successive days (a rare occurrence in badminton) at the Indonesia Open; not just that one half of her was telling her to believe when the other half was giving up. It was all this and more – the audacity of it, of an Indian girl making a Chinese look haggard in the third set of a Super Series final.
It wasn’t long ago that Indian badminton players, especially the girls, were reckoned mere stylists without the legs or the lungs — nice to watch but without the necessary physical strength or self-belief to stand up to the other Asians and Europeans. Saina changed all that in one week.
Undoubtedly, she is both the present and the future of women’s badminton. With the exception of the Chinese, who have a convoy of youngsters ready to jump into the fray, there is none of her age who can match up. To a badminton world weary of Chinese domination, Nehwal is the face of the resistance – much like Prakash Padukone in the men’s game a quarter-century ago. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learnt for sportpersons of disciplines other than cricket. Stop cribbing, start performing.
–Agencies–