Kolkata: Tennis ace Sania Mirza will miss next month’s Australian Open owing to a knee injury, and could go for a surgery to treat the condition.
Sania is suffering from a condition called jumper’s knee in her right leg. It is caused by inflammation or small tears in the tendon of the patella. Sania won the women’s doubles title at Melbourne Park in 2016 with Martina Hingis.
The 31-year-old, who was here for the final of the Premjit Lall invitational tournament, said she might have to go for a surgery and is looking for a Roger Federer-like comeback.
“It’s kind of serious. Surgery is probably on the cards as the pain has not eased in the last couple of months after a course of injections,” Sania told reporters here. “I will be out for a few months for sure,” she added.
Sania said she is okay while walking with the injured knee but playing is painful. “It’s really difficult when I have to change directions when I am playing. Walking straight is okay, I can run straight but not able to do plyometrics stuff,” she informed. “So I will be missing the Australian Open for sure. It won’t be before a couple of months at least for competitions.”
Asked about Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games next year, she said that she is hoping to be fit by the time the two tournaments happen. “Every time people ask me about plans and I always say as tennis players we don’t know about our health, anything can happen,” she said.
Sania said she is looking forward to a Federer-like return to the courts. “After 15 years on the circuit, it’s not such a big thing to be out for a few months. It did wonders for Roger (federer) – he went out for six months and since his return has lost only five match. Hopefully that can happen to me as well,” the six-time doubles champion in Grand Slam doubles said.
‘Amazing’ couple
Kolkata: Sania Mirza described Saturday just married Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma as an ‘amazing’ couple but also asked them to learn to deal with constant media scrutiny. “High profile marriages are obviously a little bit complicated in terms of dealing with so much of outside stuff, it’s not just internal,” Sania, who is married to Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Malik, said. “They obviously realised how the media hype would be here so they went to Italy. At some point, they have to face it,” Sania added.
Press Trust of India
