Serving it up

Change in China is so often announced through sport that the danger is that the feat at the Australian Open will now be over-invested with analysis.

Written by The Indian Express
January 29, 2010 10:07 PM IST

2 min read

Change in China is so often announced through sport that the danger is that the feat at the Australian Open will now be over-invested with analysis. Signalling their arrival,two Chinese women,Zheng Jie and Li Na,made it to the semi-finals of the Grand Slam tournament. Li,who went down fighting to Serena Williams,had earlier knocked out Venus Williams in a great come-back and will now be the first Chinese tennis player to be ranked among the top 10.

Both women have emerged from Chinas remarkable sport training network. Interestingly,last year the countrys top four tennis players,among them Zheng and Li,were liberated from its system of strict control over sportspersons. Now they can plan their careers independently,while adhering to a loose earning sharing formula. It is a template which is expected to be followed in other sports. But it is in tennis that the change is interesting. At the high noon of the Soviet-led communist bloc,sportspersons from East Europe and Central Asia dominated the Olympics medal tables. But they could never quite replicate that dominance on the tennis circuit. In fact,it was after the break-up of the Soviet Union that the great influx of players from Russia and East Europe began to define the Grand Slams. The Chinese authorities for long frowned upon individualism,as some of their top divers found out,but they have relaxed in the past few years. Basketballers like Yao Ming enjoy immense freedom and while an iconic athlete Liu Xiang is served like a national asset,his flamboyance is indulgently tolerated. And now,as Lis press conferences show,Chinas tennis players are keeping folks interested with an uninhibited glamour.