Mirza: “It truly is the biggest match, I’ve ever won”

The tennis queen of India, Sania Mirza unfurled the Indian tri-colour on the WTA circuit. She held herself responsible for putting India on the map. Sania began her journey by playing on the cow-dung courts of Hyderabad and she landed up wearing whites and lifting Wimbledon crown alongside her doubles-partner Martina Hingis in the year 2015. In 2005, she made it to the pre-quarters at the US Open and was named WTA Newcomer of the Year.

Digressing from her off-court achievements, Mirza is now a seven-day-old mother. She gave birth to a baby boy, named Izhaan Mirza Malik on 30 October. “There is no feeling or blessing that is greater than giving birth to her child”, said Sania. After returning back home from the hospital, Mirza posted a photo of her son in her lap watching his father Shoaib Malik playing for the Pakistan cricket team. She tweeted a heartfelt message and portrayed the emotions of a mother. “So it’s been 5 days since we came into this world .. Me as a mother and my little Izhaan as my son we’ve even watched Baba play some cricket together since we’ve arrived it truly is the biggest match, tournament achievement I’ve ever won or had and there is no feeling or,” she wrote on Twitter. 

Sania in her recent interview said, she would keep her child’s name as ‘Mirza Malik’. “Today I will tell you a secret. My husband and I have spoken about it and we have decided that whenever we have a child, the child will have Mirza-Malik as a surname and not just Malik. So that’s where we stand as a family including my husband. He actually wants a daughter,” she said. Mirza has said that she would rejoin the tennis circuit after giving birth to her child. She has not declared the timeline on her return to the circuit. She will be back on courts to prove that pregnancy cannot stop someone from pursuing her dreams.