Tennis with a Cricket Ambience

Well this happens in India where you get to watch a tennis match with a feel of a cricket or say football match. I have always watched tennis on television till yesterday. The Bangalore Open 2006 doubles semi-final between Sania-Huber & Koryttseva-Peer was only the second one after the preceding singles semi-final that I saw live in a stadium. And believe me it was not at all like the other matches (please read Wimbledon or French Open) where the silence is broken by the applause (claps and not verbal) when a game is over.

[Sania Mirza and Liezel Huber celebrate after winning their Bangalore Open doubles semifinal against Shayar Peer and Mariya Koryttseva at the KSLTA on Saturday; Courtesy: Times Of India epaper]

The crowd was going mad watching Sania play and unsettled her opponents during serves with the loudness quite similar to the scenario when Shoaib runs in to fire at Tendulkar.

The KSLTA efforts to keep away the non-tennis crowd by having high ticket prices didn’t pay off as most of them had come to have a look at Sania and make an appearance on ESPN. The sardarji sitting beside me had a comment to make, “Indian audience kabhi nahi sudhar sakti…”, only after his over-exuberance put him live on TV which was one of the motive.

Another amusing thing was that you could even spot Dosas being taken into the stadium among the eatables.