In an interview with India cricketers Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues, Sania Mirza spoke on a wide range of subjects.
The Indian tennis star has been very vocal about various issues especially when it comes to the backlashes she has received when watching and supporting her husband Shoaib Malik during cricket matches.
While talking in an interview with India cricketers Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues on their YouTube show Double Trouble, the former doubles No 1 spoke how she related to Anushka Sharma a lot.
The question arose when Mandhana asked her about the tweet regarding Mitchell Starc flying back to support Alyssa Healy. The 33-year-old tennis star said that being married to a cricketer from the subcontinent comes with a set of challenges.
“Me and Anushka relate to this the most. whenever our husbands perform it is because of them and whenever they don’t it is because of us. I don’t know how that works, There is a much deeper issue is that women can always be a distraction but not a strength. That’s a cultural issue. ‘Oh, if your girlfriend or wife is there and you are going out for dinner, you are distracted.’ That doesn’t make sense,” Mirza said.
“When he went back to his wife for the World Cup final, everybody was hailing him. I was trying to picture Shoaib [Malik] do that for me, hell would have broken loose. Anushka and I had a long conversation about it afterward.”
Mirza also spoke about choosing tennis as her career.
“Obviously my husband is a cricketer but when I started playing, my dad used to play cricket. My uncle was a Ranji Trophy player, my dad’s brother-in-law was the captain of the Indian cricket team. So we had a lot of cricket in the family.
“The natural progression for me, if I was a boy, I would have just played cricket. Things have changed a lot over the past 10 years but when I started, it was unheard of for girls to pick up cricket bats. My parents wanted me to play a sport. I used to rollerskate, swim, and play tennis. I happened to be a lot better at tennis than the other two,” Mirza said.
Among other questions, Mandhana also asked Mirza about what is so special about Hyderabad that top woman athletes like Mithali Raj, PV Sindhu, and Mirza herself hail from the city.
“Pata nahi, yaar [I don’t know, mate]. Sport has really been encouraged in Hyderabad quite a lot. I honestly think, one of my funny theories is that in Hyderabad we didn’t have a lot to do. There are not many distractions like in other big cities. That is probably why a lot of champions come out of smaller cities,” she said.
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 "Shoaib Malik-Sania Mirza and Virat Kohli-Anushka Sharma")
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