Advantage, Sania Mirza

IN Media Practice | 19/09/2005

Dasu Krishnamoorty

On Sania Mirza’s return to Hyderabad after losing to Maria Sharapova in New York, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. Rajasekhar Reddy presented her with a purse of Rs. 20 lakhs for reaching the fourth round of the US Open. Quite legitimate.  What took the shine off this gesture and hurt some media persons was his rejection of chess wizard Koneru Humpy’s request for state support to help her prepare for next year’s world championship. Both Sania and Koneru are Andhra Pradesh girls bringing laurels for the state. It was possible that Reddy was overwhelmed by the halo media wove around Sania. But the contrast in patronage was so glaring that both the Telegraph and indiatimes.com published the story of this discrimination.

This episode is significant for the way media-market collaboration makes and unmakes heroes in sports, and other areas of public life. According to G.S.Radhakrishna, Telegraph’s AP correspondent, this is the third cheque that the tennis girl received from the state government, all in the last three months, bringing the total of the largesse to Rs. 60 lakhs. His report mentions how baffled sports bureaucrats were at the government’s lopsided benefaction. "Sania is treated like a VIP and a guest of the state which has deployed four security officers to fence her off from unruly crowds and fans," says a Hyderabad sports executive. But Radhakrishna believes that this has something to do with looks and not performance. "One is glamourous, cocky, looks and sounds good on TV and is world No. 42 (now 34) in her sport. The other, with average looks and excelling in a non-spectator sport, is works No.6."

Indiatimes.com report also refers to this aspect of good looks (read marketability) as tilting the balance. "There is a not-so-subtle difference between the two, you see. Sania is the streaked, midriff-baring PYT with loads of attitude; huge ear rings and a nose pin to match. Humpy Koneru, in contrast, is bespectacled, shy youngster - certainly not one who looks like she can keep pace with Gen.X.  Has the age of superficial behaviour reached such mammoth levels that achievers must also be spin-doctored to look and act it certain way?  What if Sania resembled Humpy and did not attend post-match media interactions in T-shirts which say ‘I am cute no s***?"

Though Radhakrishna was reluctant to refer to the part of the media in influencing public and state actions and decisions, his newspaper Telegraph wrote an editorial pointing out what led the state government to be indifferent to Humpy’s career and how it could have been a response to media hype. The editorial said, "But the difference in the quality and the quantity of the state’s largesse (recall Sania’s Arjuna Award last year) affects the judgment that has been already passed by that other arbiter of popular judgments, the media." Reddy’s decision is really not political as much as it is surrender to media spin. Since media and market are today synonyms for each other, each sets the agenda for the other. Reddy’s largesse to Sania, already an extremely rich girl for her presence in tennis, would have been controversy-free if he had helped Humpy who topped chess rankings at least ten times in her career.

Nobody grudges Sania her limelight and money. It is the selective patronage of the media that needs a rethink. Last week, Anju Bobby George came back from Incheon and Monaco, winning silver at the World Athletics Final Championship and gold at the Asian Athletic Championship. How much of Anju appeared in the print and TV media? Track events are played all over the world and are part of the Olympic games. We have really no idea of how many of India’s star performers in other games had to sell their medals to just survive. Sport is no more a matter of performance. It is all about marketing. What game to choose for the drum-beat and what sportsperson to project are marketing decisions that play havoc with the state of sports in the country. The media is an accomplice in this sport. This is really not a new story but the script-writers, the characters and the sales pitch are.

Sania Mirza became the first seed to be knocked out of the 225,000-dollar WTA Wismilak tennis tournament on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Tuesday. That hardly dents her image, popularity and market value at home. For the media, Sania matters whether she loses or wins. Apart from how this media madness affects her game in the form of pressures that rising expectations build on her performance, it devalues other sports and sportspersons for no fault of theirs. On the same day Sania lost at Bali, the Telegraph wrote an editorial that in fact is a commentary on media values and a call to redraw the line between the market and the media.

How some stars are more equal than others in the media is evident from the Google entries for Sania Mirza and Humpy, 673,000 and 24,000 respectively. Sania has 28 times more entries than Humpy who topped the world rankings at least ten times.   As the Telegraph editorial said, "This is, of course, not purely a matter of image, but also one of material gains, of how much the image of each player is worth in the market, in the world of sponsorships and endorsements." What a columnist of Praful Bidwai’s stature wrote is no different.  He said, "If there is an Indian equivalent of the Tiger Woods phenomenon, where a young person makes an unexpected and dramatic impact on a sport and its popular perception, it is undoubtedly Sania Mirza. Here is the marketing hype about Sania: Marketing gurus already see Sania Mirza as a role model for the young."