It will happen again. And soon. Probably in another Indian city. The objectives of the terrorists are clear. One, weaken India’s economy which has been robust in the recent past, giving hope that poverty can and will be eliminated in our lifetimes.Two, weaken India’s links with the external world. If foreigners cut down their interactions with India, trade and investment flows can suffer hurting us substantially.Three, make India unattractive for Americans and the British. This is a double whammy for these two countries are categorised as enemies of Islamist Fascism.Four, hit the India-Israel connection. Nothing rankles Islamist revivalists more than the fact that in living memory the forces of fanatical Islam have lost to secular Hindu-majority India (1971) and democratic Jewish Israel (1967; 1973).Five, drive a wedge between India’s majority and its Muslims. Indian Muslims have chosen to stay in a secular democratic country where they are freer than Muslims elsewhere, where they can vote in fair elections (unlike in any Muslim majority country) and where despite legitimate grievances they have role models succeeding in fields that have nothing to do with religion or medievalism: Azim Premji (information technology), Shah Rukh Khan (acting, an irreligious profession), Abdul Kalam (science, virtually abandoned now by the Islamic world despite a glorious earlier heritage), Sania Mirza (tennis, where her sports clothes are met with pious disapproval), Rahman (music, another sinful forbidden activity) and many more.

Russia’s former world No.1 Maria Sharapova will join two other Russian tennis players to play in an exhibition tournament in Hong Kong on January 7-10.
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The 21-year-old tennis player withdrew from the WTA Rogers Cup in Montreal in late July because of a shoulder injury.
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The injury forced Sharapova, who began the year by winning the 2008 Australian Open, to miss the U.S. Open, the 2008 Beijing Olympics and other major tennis events.

India’s ace tennis player Sania Mirza has slipped out of the top 100 in the latest WTA singles rankings chart.

Mirza, who has been out of action since the Beijing Olympics has dropped out of the top 100 for the first time in nearly three years.

Sports are one of the major forms of recreation, downright competition and entertainment today. Any country will have a sport attached to it. If it’s basketball for the United States, it is soccer for Europe, if rugby generates hype for Australia; cricket undoubtedly is as good as a religion in India. In order to promote the events and tournaments that these countries host, you need proper marketing strategies. This is where the concept of a Sports Marketing Company arises. To carry ahead and popularize a sport that isn’t familiar to other nations is a huge responsibility, and is the ultimate test of a sports marketing agency/company. A whole lot of money is at stake, right from the production to advertising to the telecasting/ broad casting right every department has a significant role to play. Let us discuss the prominence of these kinds of companies in detail.

Sania Mirza, who was out with a wrist injury, is on a comeback trail. “By all means, this is the beginning of a new chapter in my career. Hope things will move in the right direction,” she says in a chat with V. V. Subrahmanyam.