Shoaib Malik to wed Sania Mirza

The marriage is sure to attract attention because neighbouring Pakistan and India are longtime rivals, and have fought three wars since 1947.

“The news of me marrying to Sania is true,” Malik posted on Twitter on Tuesday. “Inshallah (God willing) will get married in April.”

The Pakistan Cricket Board has fined and banned Malik for one year for unspecified disciplinary reasons following heavy defeats in both test and limited-overs series against Australia earlier this year.

The 23-year-old Mirza ended a previous engagement to childhood friend Sohrab Mirza in January, citing incompatibility.

She issued a statement Tuesday confirming the marriage plan, but asking for privacy.

“My wedding Inshallah is going to be the biggest day of my life,” she said. “I have been in the media glare for too long and would appreciate a little privacy at this very personal moment in my life.”

Her father, Imran Mirza, said both Sania and Malik will be based in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, but continue to represent their countries in their respective sports.

“This is a unique case where husband and wife will represent their respective countries in sport,” he said in a statement issued in Hyderabad, India, where the family lives.

A local television reported that Mirza, her parents and sister, had applied for a visa at the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi on Tuesday and were expected to be issued with a visa of three weeks in duration and valid for 60 days.

Mirza, a two-time Grand Slam mixed doubles champion, became the first Indian woman to crack the top 40 in the international tennis rankings, reaching a career high of No. 27 in August 2007. At one time, the Muslim player was assailed by conservative elements of the Indian community for competing in short skirts and sleeveless shirts. She has not advanced beyond the first round in her last four tournaments and withdrew from tournaments in Malaysia and the United States in recent weeks due to a wrist injury. She is currently No. 92 in the rankings.

Malik, 28, was at the centre of marriage controversy five years ago when he was reportedly broke an engagement with Ayesha Siddiqui, who was from Mirza’s hometown in India.

The two had reportedly developed friendship on the internet and Siddiqui’s father had even threatened to take Malik to court.

Malik has denied any serious relationship with Siddique.

The dashing cricketer was also linked with Indian actress Siali Bhagat, and there were reports of the two meeting confidentially in 2008.

News of the Malik-Mirza engagement spread quickly on Tuesday.

It’s not the first time that a Pakistani cricketer will be married to a high-profile Indian woman.

Former test batsman Mohsin Khan, now the national chief selector, married Indian actress Reena Roy in the 1980s. The marriage later broke down.

Newspapers reported that Malik first met Mirza at Hobart, Australia in January, when the Pakistan squad was on tour and Mirza was in the city for a tennis tournament.

“It was after this meeting that Mirza’s engagement with his childhood friend broke,” a local Urdu daily reported.

Diplomatic relations between Pakistan and India grew more tense after a terrorist attack in the Indian film and financial hub of Mumbai in November, 2008. As a result, the Indian cricket team postponed its scheduled test tour to Pakistan due to security concerns.

The Pakistan government refused permission for its players to join the second edition of the Indian Premier League last year before the lucrative Indian domestic league was moved to South Africa.

Sporting relations deteriorated further when no Pakistani cricketers were picked up by Indian clubs in this year’s auction for the IPL.

Malik played for Delhi Daredevils in the inaugural edition of IPL in 2008.

He played 29 test matches for Pakistan and scored 1,517 runs at an average of 36.11. In 190 one-day internationals he has scored 5,141 runs at an average of 34.50 and also took 132 wickets with his off-spin bowling.

Malik lost the captaincy of the national team after Pakistan lost a limited-overs series to Sri Lanka at home last year. —AP

sania

Sania is a hard-working, overachieving phenom who has stayed remarkably down-to-earth. Despite her successes on the WTA circuit, Sania still travels with her mother and giggles like a schoolgirl when discussing her private life. Watching Sania blush her way through interviews, it's easy to forget that her fierce serve and powerful game make her one of the better female tennis players on the planet.

Tennis sensation Sania Mirza is dispatching foes at a historic rate. Sania is the first Indian woman to advance to the fourth round of a Grand Slam tournament, the first to win a WTA singles title and the first to win a junior Grand Slam title. To date, she's beaten two top 10 players, and has successfully cracked the WTA's Top 30 rankings.

Sania Mirza may not have come into this world with a racket in her hand, but it didn't take long for the tennis phenom to pick one up. Born on November 15, 1986, in Mumbai, India, Sania was encouraged to start playing the sport at the age of 6. "I used to go swimming and passed the tennis courts every day," she recalls, "and that's how it started. My mum said 'Why don't you play tennis in your summer holidays because you have nothing to do except swim for an hour or whatever?', and that's how I started playing.

Getting her career on track was another matter altogether. "My mother took me to a coach, who initially refused to coach me because I was too small," says Mirza. "After a month, he called my parents to say he'd never seen a player that good at such a young age."

Encouraged by the coach's assessment, Sania continued to train long and hard while her peers enjoyed more frivolous pursuits. In retrospect, she realizes she may have missed out on having a regular childhood, but doesn't regret it for a moment. "I realized that if you don't make those sacrifices, I don't think you can make something out of your life," she says. "Sometimes I did feel I was missing out, like sometimes I'd want to go to a birthday party but I couldn't because I had tennis." Fortunately, Sania's remarkable focus and determination paid off.

Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik: the romance that gripped two nations

Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik discuss his previous alleged marriage with the press on Monday Photograph: Mahesh Kumar A/AP

Bring on the puns about love games, fine legs and bowling a maiden over. Pakistan's former cricket captain, Shoaib Malik, is to marry India's top-ranked female tennis player, Sania Mirza. In India, the rightwing Hindu nationalist political party, the BJP, has asked Mirza to "reconsider" her decision to marry a Pakistani, while more centrist parties have remained silent. In Pakistan, the Islamic rightwing political parties – who would usually have a lot to say about women who wear tennis skirts – have remained silent, while more centrist parties have voiced their congratulations. The contrasting attitudes each side of the border actually reveal the same assumption: a wife belongs to her husband's "household", so an Indian woman marrying a Pakistani man is unpatriotic, whereas a Pakistani man marrying an Indian woman is carrying home the spoils of victory. Or, as the painfully sexist/ jingoistic joke doing the rounds in Pakistan goes: "Finally, we get to see Pakistan screwing India."

But wait, there's more. Ayesha Siddiqui from Hyderabad, India – Sania's home town – has appeared, declaring she is already married to Shoaib. Many Pakistanis remember Ayesha from a news story in 2005 that hailed "cross-border love" as Pakistan's cricket team travelled to India and provided a first opportunity for Shoaib to meet the in-laws. According to the stories at the time, Shoaib and Ayesha had met once in Jeddah (by her account, which he neither corroborated nor denied), continued a romance via the internet and were married over the phone in 2002. As stories went it was a compelling one – love across the border but within the same religion (ie confronting prejudice without breaking taboo) and a pleasing mix of modernity and tradition (internet romances both break and maintain the strictures of arranged marriages by allowing couples to communicate while still maintaining a modest physical separation).

Three years later, Ayesha's father declared that the marriage was over, but Shoaib was refusing to grant Ayesha a divorce. Shoaib insisted that though there was an internet romance, the marriage never took place. Now he says that yes, she pressurised him into taking part in a nikah – marriage ceremony – over the phone, but the chief qazi (sharia judge) of Hyderabad says a phone nikah isn't valid in Islamic law and in any case, Shoaib says, the nikah is doubly invalid because he was deceived about who he was marrying.

"But did you go to a hotel room with her?" an Indian journalist asked at the recent Sania-Shoaib press conference, voicing the question on everyone's mind. Shoaib looked pained. "First, tell me, who is Ayesha, and who is Maha? Tell her to come in front of me so I can be clear on this." This is the crux of the issue. Shoaib says he believed the woman he had agreed to marry, and whose photographs he had seen, was called Ayesha. But he later found out the woman in the photographs and the woman who he had been speaking to (and agreed to marry) were two entirely different women. He is refusing to release the photographs because the woman in them, he has discovered, is already married and he doesn't want to drag her into the scandal.

The "other woman" – who he agreed to marry – turned out to be someone called Maha. In a further twist, he says he had met Maha but believed she was an older relative of his fiancee Ayesha. Intriguingly, in 2005, prior to the Pakistan cricket team's arrival in India, the BBC named Shoaib's betrothed as "Ayesha (AKA Maha Siddiqui)".

This tiny detail is of little relevance to Shoaib's supporters, who point to photographs of Ayesha as proof that he clearly didn't know who he was marrying. "How could a hot young cricketer choose to marry someone who looks like that?" they ask. (In Pakistan, as all around the world, deception about personality traits are to be expected in courtship, but deception about physiognomy is entirely unacceptable.)

Meanwhile, Pakistan waits to greet Sania with open arms, and well-chosen wedding gifts. Pakistan's federal minister for population welfare has vowed to give the couple a "family planning kit". Pakistani comedian Sami Shah remarked, "She is going to give them a condom as a wedding present. I guess they can cross that off their wedding registry. Now, who's getting the blender?"

sania mirza,shoib malik engaement

Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik and Indian tennis star Sania Mirza announced their engagement last week to cheers (from romantics and tender-hearted peaceniks), jeers (mostly from patriotic Indians who felt their sweetheart should marry a boy from home), and front-page headlines across the subcontinent.

The two are due to marry in Hyderabad, Mirza’s southern Indian hometown, on April 15.

But Monday, Indian police questioned Malik for two hours, seized his passport and instructed airports not to let him leave the country while they investigated claims the all-rounder was already married.

An Indian woman, Ayesha Siddiqui, who coincidentally hails from Ms. Mirza’s town, claims that she and Malik are already married. They had tied the knot, she said, in a telephonic “nikah” – or marriage – in 2002.

Ms. Siddiqui stoked the fire further Sunday night, filing a police complaint against Malik, accusing him of cheating her, offering her money to keep quiet, and threatening to kill her if she went public.

Monday, the engaged couple held a news conference in which Malik said he would cooperate with the Indian authorities – and that he would clear his name.

Mirza supported him, saying: “I know, we know what the truth is, and it will come out, and we believe in justice.”

The truth in this case seems to be a little elusive, however.

Married over the phone?

Over the weekend, Malik admitted in newspaper interviews he had developed a friendship over the Internet with Siddiqui in 2002 and then married her after they exchanged photographs.

But he said the ceremony was invalid because the photographs Siqqiqui had sent him were of someone else. "I was made to believe the girl in the photograph was the one I was speaking to," he said. "The truth is, I haven't, to this day, met the girl in the photographs Ayesha sent me."

The idea of a telephonic nikah has sent Indian newspapers into a spin. Even Islamic law experts say it is unclear whether marriage celebrated via communications technology would be legally valid under Islamic law.

India jeers, Pakistan cheers

Meanwhile, Malik’s questioning by police has stoked the anger of Indians who do not want one of their prettiest sports stars to marry a Pakistani.

“... why is Sania Mirza, who is just 24, in such a tearing hurry to marry this man?” wrote Reagan Gavin Rasquinha in the Times of India newspaper. “It isn’t as if he is the most eligible bachelor around. And, it’s not even certain if he is a bachelor.”

The same paper printed a list of more suitable Indian grooms for Mirza Tuesday, which included Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Congress Party that has led India for much of its post-independence history.

“What makes Rahul the best choice is the fact that his slate is still clean, so Sania won’t have any ghosts of his past life,” said the paper

Pakistanis, however, seem to be happier than their Indian neighbors that Malik is marrying an Indian girl.

Indeed, the Pakistan Tennis Federation (PTF) is keen to employ Mirza as a female tennis coach, according to The Dawn newspaper, a Pakistani daily.

“Sania will be of great help for Pakistan’s emerging female tennis players as she has the international exposure and experience,” said the secretary of the PTF, Rashid Khan, the paper reported.

Mirza, who was the first Indian to win a Women’s Tennis Association tour title in 2005, has not publicly commented on this invitation

Shoaib-Sania marriage may be postponed

Indian tennis star Sania Mirza and Pakistan's former cricket captain Shoaib Malik address the media in Hyderabad, India, Monday. Police have questioned Malik ahead of his planned marriage to Mirza regarding allegations made by another woman claiming to be the cricket player's first wife

Uefa champion league

Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand, left, and Bayern Munich's Daniel van Buyten contested a head ball on Wednesday during the second leg of their quarterfinal series in the UEFA Champions League at Old Trafford in Manchester, England. Bayern lost the game, but advanced to the semifinals on the away goals rule.

First base during first inings

Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, right, lost the ball and his balance Wednesday night as he tried to beat Boston's Jacoby Ellsbury to first base during the first inning at Fenway Park

Sports gallery

Scrutinizing Woods’s Game, and His Sportsmanship

AUGASTYA,GA-hortly after Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer reunite on Thursday morning to hit the honorary opening tee shots in the Masters, 96 golfers will begin battling their own jangling nerves and a firm and fast Augusta National golf course.

Brian Snyder/Reuters

Tiger Woods signed autographs after a practice round Wednesday. He has pledged to try to “not get as hot when I play.”

This is where spring begins, on golf’s finest stage, with the game and its players on display at the year’s first major championship. And this year there will be an additional subplot, centering on the prodigality of one of the four-time champions, Tiger Woods, and his attempt to rebuild a fallen image and restore his golf game as the standard against which all others are measured.

The quantifying begins now, inside and outside the ropes, and Woods’s behavior will be scrutinized as closely as his scores. Measures of his success and failure this week will hinge in part on whether Woods will keep some of the promises made at the beginning of the week, including one about his widely criticized tendency toward angry, profanity-laced outbursts and thrown clubs over bad shots.

Woods promised he would try to “not get as hot when I play.” This is not likely to be an easy promise to keep.

It is not that Woods will be expected to start signing autographs during play, or to chat with fans the way Palmer used to as he looked for an errant drive. No one thinks he will high-five or fist-bump spectators à la Phil Mickelson.

This will be about not erupting in a string of obscenities, as he has on numerous occasions during the past 10 years. It started with the infamous tirade on the 18th tee at Pebble Beach in 2000 during the United States Open, which he eventually won by 15 strokes. While completing the fog-delayed second round, Woods hooked his drive into the Pacific Ocean, and his outburst was captured by a microphone near the tee.

More recent examples include a slammed driver that bounced into the gallery last November at the Australian Masters, his most recent tournament. He also threw his driver into a swampy area in front of a tee at the Deutsche Bank Championship last year. Although his behavior had attracted isolated criticism previously, it was brought to the forefront in January when Tom Watson criticized Woods for “his swearing and his club throwing, that should end.”

But the roots run deep. It was Woods’s father, Earl, who might have planted in his son the notion that swearing on the course was just something that people would have to get used to.

“You can’t have it both ways with Tiger,” Earl Woods told Golf Digest in 2001. “You can’t have charismatic abilities to execute the marvelous shots and then chastise him when that same passion causes him to overload when he hits a bad shot.

“Specifically about swearing, it’s a — I won’t say a cultural thing; it’s a family thing. My father could swear for 30 minutes and never repeat himself.”

His son does not believe he can rein in one without losing the other, and he said so in what sounded more like a threat than a promise.

“When I’m not as hot, I’m not going to be as exuberant either,” Woods said. “I can’t play one without the other, and so I made a conscious decision to try and tone down my negative outbursts, and consequently I’m sure my positive outbursts be will calmed down as well.”

Woods is certainly not the only PGA Tour player to blow up on the golf course. Tommy Bolt was a legendary club thrower, club breaker and swearer during his heyday in the 1950s. Curtis Strange was often fined for language unbecoming a professional, and became so enraged after one poor drive at Doral in the ’80s that he kicked the bottom of his golf bag while his caddie was carrying it, which sent the caddie to the ground and injured his back.

A lawsuit was settled out of court, with Strange paying the hospital bills and a sum of money for damages. Unbeknownst to many fans, Fred Couples is not always the calm, benign embodiment of cool. When a tee shot found a bad lie in a bunker during the Tournament of Champions at LaCosta in the ’90s, Couples was caught uttering some words that are still not permissible on the public airwaves.

Similarly, when a local reporter trailing Couples followed him and his errant drive into the woods at a P.G.A. Championship, she overheard him using an unflattering adjective in front of the word “schmoes” to describe some fans who had applauded the shot.

Though prominent, none of these players in these examples were held to the same standards as Woods, whose image as a role model was carefully crafted and maintained by his sponsors and handlers.

Even Bob Jones, the venerated co-founder of Augusta National and the Masters, struggled with his temper as a young man. In 1921, the 19-year-old Jones was playing the third round of the British Open at the Old Course at St. Andrews when he drove his ball into a fairway bunker, from which three attempts did not extricate his ball.

Jones promptly pocketed the ball, tore up his scorecard and withdrew from the tournament. He later apologized profusely and vowed to change his ways. He was one of the few who were able to do so.

And now the tournament Jones started at the club he co-founded will be the focus of a very public attempt by Woods to do the same. Billy Payne, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters, called out Woods during his public remarks Wednesday and said that Woods would be measured by the “sincerity of his of his efforts to change.”

“I hope he now realizes,” Payne said, “that every kid he passes on the course wants his swing, but would settle for his smile.”

Schwank fined after erratic play at Clay Court

HOUSTON (AP)—Eduardo Schwank was fined $1,000 for his erratic and unusual play after losing 6-1, 6-7 (5), 6-1 to fellow Argentine Juan Ignacio Chela in the second round of the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championships.

Schwank, the seventh seed, says a back problem caused him to use numerous drop shots and lobs in his Tuesday match. The crowd booed him after he foot-faulted on match point.

Rain forced the postponement of defending champion Lleyton Hewitt’s match against lucky loser Somdev Devvarman of India until Thursday. Hewitt has not played since having hip surgery on Jan. 29. Third-seeded Sam Querrey of the United States against Blaz Kavcic of Slovania also was rescheduled for Thursday.

“The problem with my back, it affected me mentally so it didn’t help the match,” Schwank said through an interpreter. “I was doing drop shots to shorten the point so to not exert my back so much and also to make him run and get him tired.”

Chela said it was difficult to play at such an inconsistent pace.

“It’s hard to keep concentration when two points are very well played and two points are poorly played,” Chela said through an interpreter. “He kept doing those drop shots so it was really hard to focus. I tried to stay on course and play my best tennis.”

Schwank said his back had bothered him for a few days. He planned to return home and expects to play at Barcelona.

“Well I don’t like to retire, that’s why I just played until the end,” Schwank said. “For me it was the same, retiring or not. At the end it’s the same. I’d rather stay on the court and loose on court.”

Chela disagreed with the strategy.

“I think if you have any sort of pain, where you don’t feel well and aren’t able to give 100 percent on the court, it’s better to just retire,” he said.

Nicolas Massu of Chile had to played the longest match on tour this year (three hours, 25 minutes) before finally beating qualifier Ryan Sweeting of the United States, 6-7, 7-6, 6-4.

Sweeting was trying to reach his first quarterfinal on the ATP tour this year and he almost did it until Massu finally took advantage of Sweeting’s missed chances.

“I thought I was the more aggressive player throughout the whole match,” Sweeting said. “I had chances in every set. I don’t think the first set needed to go 7-6. I was up a break there and I was up a break in the second and third.”

Tennis legend Navratilova diagnosed with breast cancer

LONDON (AFP) - Tennis legend Martina Navratilova revealed Wednesday she has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

The 53-year-old, who won 18 Grand Slam titles including nine Wimbledon singles titles, said she cried after finding out she had the disease.

"It knocked me on my ass, really. I feel so in control of my life and my body, and then this comes, and it's completely out of my hands," Navratilova told People magazine.

The disease was first detected in February after a routine mammogram revealed a cluster in her left breast.

According to the report, doctors say the former Wimbledon champion's prognosis is excellent because the tumour was detected at an early stage.

Navratilova has already had the lump removed and will begin six weeks of radiation therapy in May.

"It was a total shock because I've been so healthy," she added. "I thought, 'I'm going to lose my boob and then my hair, and I don't have that much. There's a good chance it won't come back'."

The former world number one said she had intended to keep the news quiet but changed her mind when she realised she could persuade other women to go for check ups.

"The sooner you catch it, the better," she said. "So get the bloody mammogram.

"I went four years between mammograms. I let it slide. Everyone gets busy, but don't make excuses. I stay in shape and eat right, and it happened to me. Another year and I could have been in big trouble."

Born in Prague, Navratilova fled to the United States in 1975 at the height of the Cold War. She became a US citizen six years later but regained her Czech nationality two years ago, and has dual nationality.