Top 15 Sania Mirza Quotes

She is betraying both nations, she neither lives here (India) nor in Pakistan, but she resides in Dubai. We request the Indian Government not to allow Sania to represent India and let her reside in Dubai.

She is very typical of her generation - these new teenagers who are not quite the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll generation of Sixties America but who are very in your face, very confident and very brash. This kind of attitude is not unique to her: you see teenagers like her in the streets. She represents a new India that doesn't care what anyone thinks.

She is fearless about going for the shots. She just believes that all her shots will go in.

India is the country that produced such cultured male players as Vijay Amritraj and Ramesh Krishnan, and she might have been expected to place as much emphasis on old-style craft as crunch. In fact, her all-out aggression, underpinned by the sort of destructive forehand that was the signature of her role model Steffi Graf's game, makes her a very contemporary player indeed. To become a top-10 player, she has to work on her mobility and add some dimension to a game that is too dependent on the weighty forehand.

She proves that young Muslim girls can make a mark if they are given the right chances... Many Muslims in India are economically and educationally backward; she has given the community new hope.

We are proud of her achievement. In India there are not many other young female role models like her.

When she first emerged, she was celebrated as an example of how well religious integration was working in a country that has a Muslim president, a Sikh prime minister, and a Christian leader of its Congress party. The controversy over her clothes was seen as an absurdity by mainstream Muslim leaders.

The dress she wears on the tennis court not only doesn't cover large parts of her body but leaves nothing to the imagination of voyeurs. She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence.

Indian Gold, Indian tea and Indian petrol to the nation: When car manufacturer Hyundai made her brand ambassador for their Getz model, production capacity doubled. She had not yet won a major tournament, but her fame was spreading well beyond Asia: soon she would be on the front of Time magazine and selected by the New Statesman as one of 10 young people with the potential to change the world.

With her diamond nose stud and multiple ear-piercings, she brought glamour to the game. Advertisers and corporate sponsors rushed to sign her and soon her face was selling.

She is a very talented player. I see a very good future for her.

Her breezy optimism as she took on some of the world's top players endeared her to her compatriots: for just as India was beginning to emerge as a world power, here was a young woman displaying a brazen determination to shake off the shackles of the underdog. Off-court, too, her confidence was striking. Confounding stereotypes of demure and retiring Indian femininity, she delighted in brash displays of adolescent attitude.

She had become headline news in her homeland since her return from Melbourne, where in January she had reached the third round of the Australian Open, the first time that an Indian woman had progressed so far in a grand slam event.

On 12 February 2005 thousands of people started gathering at dawn for the final of the Hyderabad Open [to watch Sania in the final] and, by 10 in the morning, so dense were the crowds outside that it was difficult to get into the Fateh Maidan complex. There for the match were film stars from south India as well as local government officials; corporate VIPs from Mumbai, labourers from nearby towns and families who had travelled hundreds of miles from Delhi.

The fastest rising star in women's tennis is adored by millions in her home country. But the Muslim teenager has been denounced by extremist clerics for dressing in a 'corrupting' way. Now she needs bodyguards to provide constant protection.