Bird on a wire

Here we go again. An Indian teenager comes up big in the sports world, in spite of and not because of the system in place. The backstory is familiar: hours of hardship and personal financial inputs until it pays off, followed by fawning media coverage, the anointment as the Next Big Thing, and the placement of humungus expectations (a carelessly thrown in "hopes of a billion people" is bound to show up soon enough).

Here's hoping Saina Nehwal does not go the way of Sania Mirza. Here's Rohit Mahajan with a fairly balanced piece on the latest badminton threat from India.

Saina Nehwal plays badminton in a manner almost unprecedented in Indian sport—the muscularity of her game, the strength of her smashes and the quickness of her eye and feet are incongruous with the delicate, all-wrist, cerebral style preferred by top Indian shuttlers of the past. “I can outlast the Chinese, they get tired too,” she states impassively.

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When she was small—and called Steffi, for her parents were fans of the German tennis star—Saina would travel 50 km a day on her father’s scooter, to training and school. She’d sometimes fall asleep on the way, so her mother started accompanying them to keep her from falling off. Now Saina drives to training in her new luxury car. She has a great fan following, especially on the internet.

Much has changed but, say those who have seen her progress closely, she has not. “I’ve been meeting and talking with her for eight-odd years, she’s the same girl. Her politeness and values come from her family,” says badminton writer Dev S. Sukumar. Saina doesn’t turn down interview requests; she calls back if she misses a call or gets a text. That would explain frequent bills of over Rs 40,000 while on foreign tours. Money, in fact, was a bit tight until the Mittal Trust of Champions got interested in her.