Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza on Wednesday said there are more female sports superstars in the country now apart from cricket but the onus is also on these women to define how they want to represent themselves.
Sania said from the time she started playing nearly 32 years ago on tennis courts made of “cow dung” and taking tetanus injections for precautions, the country has had several female superstars but they need to stay true to their characters.
“From having the only female superstar that I had from India was PT Usha and that was somebody we just heard of, we never saw because there was no social media, no media or there was no coverage,” she said on a panel discussion named ‘The Sports Women’ by Capri Sports.
“To today, when we go to the Olympics or outside of probably three or four male cricketers, the biggest superstars from this country in sport are female athletes and that says a lot over the last 50 years,” she added.
Sania said the female players in the country across sports need to emphasise on playing for themselves and represent their character and not how others want them to be.
“Are we living in a man’s world? The answer is yes. Are we living in a man’s world when it comes to sport? The answer is yes. Are we living in a man’s world or are we living in a cricket’s world when it comes to this country? The answer is yes,” Sania said.
“As female representation, the onus is also on us how we represent ourselves, how we are actually showing the world.” “We like world beaters in this part of the world, but we don’t want them to act like world beaters. We still want them to act like they are bichare (poor).” “So if you act like a world beater, they’re like, ‘they have attitude and they’re arrogant’. But if then you are acting like, oh, you’re a bichare (poor), then they say, ‘you’re a good girl’ or whatever. But then they (also) say, ‘oh, you don’t have killer instincts’. So there’s no winning in that,” she added.
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The former women’s doubles world No 1 added, “You don’t do anything for other people, you do it for yourself. I don’t actually care how other people represent me, I care how I represent myself.” India’s two-time Olympic medal winner PV Sindhu added that if female athletes start thinking about others’ opinions, it can “break” a player.
“You don’t have to actually bother or feel bad about what they (social media) think, but it’s what you think and what matters is how you are feeling at the end of the day,” Sindhu said.
“If you actually think about what others are thinking, that will really take you somewhere you can’t even imagine, because it breaks you and that’s where the mental health (issues) start and you actually go into a circle where you don’t know what’s going on,” she added.
Sindhu said while the dynamics have changed a lot for women in sports, there still has to be a lot of work done at the grassroots levels from both the government and the private sector.
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“There’s been a lot of change. Initially there was not much recognition. But I think now there’s a lot more. Apart from that, I feel there needs to be a lot of support from the sponsors,” she said.
“I think that can increase where they actually support from the grassroots levels and that’s very important, not just the elite athletes, but from the grassroots levels.
“Because when you’re an elite and when you’re doing well, when you’re at the top, everything is going to be fine.” Sindhu won a silver in the 2016 Rio Olympics and then bagged a bronze in the 2021 Tokyo Games.
She added, “To recognise those young athletes from the grassroots levels is very important and to prove them and also make sure that they’re going in the right way and guide them in the right way, that needs to improve a lot more.”
