Bhubaneswar: She has taken Indian tennis to new heights with her deeds. She has been the World No. 1 in women’s and mixed doubles winning a number of Grand Slam titles. Yet do you know Sania Mirza at one point of time in her career wanted to give up tennis once and for all. This incident again goes a long way to prove how important mental health is in our lives whichever field one may be in. Sania Mirza has also said it took her while to get out of her mental problems
In the past cricketers Virat Kohli and Glenn Maxwell have spoken about their mental health issues. Recently, India’s tennis queen Sania Mirza also talked about how she suffered from depression and mental health issues after pulling out the Beijing Olympics in 2008 due to an injury. Sania had a wrist injury and while playing her first round match against the Czech Republic’s Iveta Benesova in the first round she retired. She was trailing 2-6, 1-2 in the match when pain forced her to quit.
“Yeah, I mean a bunch of times I had suffered mental issues. Not just tennis-wise, but also out of the court. I think many times we rely so much on our career to bring happiness into our lives, we kind of forget that career is just a part of our lives, it is not really our life. At 34, it is a lot clearer in my mind but at 20, there were a lot of incidents where I honestly felt that I could not do this,” Sania said in a YouTube interview for ‘Mind Matters’.
“One incident remains vivid was when I had to pull out of my match at the Olympics. I had a very bad wrist injury. I went into depression for 3-4 months after that, I remember crying for no reason. I would be absolutely fine and then I would burst into tears. I remember not coming out of my room to even eat a meal for over a month,” informed Sania.
“I felt that I will never be able to play tennis ever again. I am a bit of a control freak so for me not being able to do things on my terms was very difficult to digest. The fact that I was being forced into not being able to do what I love or what I do, was really bothering me. It’s a lot for anybody at any age, but for a 20-year-old to read that you’re finished or you are not going to be able to compete at Olympics ever again,” she added.
Sania also revealed that her injury was so bad that she could even comb her hair properly.
“I had lost complete motion, and I needed surgery. After surgery, it got worse. It was a complicated thing that was happening. I felt I let my family and country down. My family helped me see the right direction and I got the help I needed. I happened to win two medals at the Commonwealth Games that happened in India,” Sania informed.
Probably those two medals at the Commonwealth Games gave her career the fillip she need. She won 14 medals (including 6 gold) at three major multi-sport events, namely the Asian Games, the Commonwealth Games, and the Afro-Asian Games. She has also won six Grand Slam titles in her career.