For a while on Show Court 3 at the Australian Open on Thursday, it seemed as if Sania Mirza was going to buckle under the pressure and surrender. After winning the first set 6-1 in her typically aggressive style, her game had faltered, and she looked pensive as she submitted 4-6 in the second. Now she was down 1-3 in the decider, and her Swiss-Hungarian opponent Timea Bacsinszky threatened to run away with the match.

The exhortation from the players’ box had come from her father, Imran Mirza, and it had sounded like part instruction, part encouragement. Like many Indian families, the Mirzas are extremely close-knit, and Imran has played a pivotal role in Sania’s emergence as a world-class tennis player. I still remember my surprise when, visiting her house in Hyderabad many years ago, I discovered that Imran and his wife Naseema were about to set off for Thiruvanthapuram in their beat-up Maruti Esteem so that Sania could participate in a tennis tournament. They couldn’t afford to fly.

Nobody had heard of Sania Mirza at that time, but Imran, an enthusiastic club cricketer and tennis player, had recognised very early, when his daughter was just six years old, that she was blessed with an amazing ball sense. The Mirzas were solidly middle-class, and owned a small printing press. They did not have the money to send their daughter abroad for training, and facilities in Hyderabad for coaching a precocious tennis genius were primitive.

Nevertheless, unusually for a middle-class family during the early ‘90s, the Mirzas decided to devote all their time and resources to help Sania develop her sporting talent.

The huge gamble they took with their lives eventually paid off, and today Sania, barely 21, has become an international sporting icon. I came to Australia to attend a conference, and have enjoyed watching the reactions of silver-maned university professors when I announce that I’m an uncle of Sania’s, and that I’m off to watch her play at Melbourne Park (for the purposes of full journalistic disclosure, let me state that her father is my second cousin.)

But when I dropped in to see Imran and Sania at their hotel in Melbourne earlier this week, I found them deeply troubled. The blizzard of off-court controversies in the last few months into which Sania’s name has been dragged, has left the Mirzas depressed, with the most bewildering being the accusation that she deliberately showed disrespect to the national flag, and was therefore in some way anti-national.

The facts of this particular incident are well known, and Paul McNamee, the organiser of the Hopman Cup, during which the controversial photo of Sania and the Indian flag was taken, has already explained that the tennis player was resting her feet in the players’ box a couple of rows away from the tricolour. The photo was shot from the court with a telephoto lens, which would have distorted the angle and shortened the distance between the flag and Sania’s bare feet. After the opening women’s singles match against Australia which she won, Sania was watching Rohan Bopanna play the men’s singles event, and waiting to join him for the doubles encounter. “Most players adopt the practice of keeping their legs raised after a match to assist in overcoming a lactic acid build-up to prevent cramping,” McNamee said. “It is just a normal situation.”

But the reason why the charge that Sania is anti-Indian has provoked extreme astonishment in our family is also because she is known to have got into scraps with members of the Hyderabadi diaspora whenever she has felt that her country was being unjustly criticised. As a result, Sania has a reputation among her relatives of being an ardent nationalist.

Whatever her personal beliefs, though, her record as a professional sportsperson leaves little room for doubt as to where her heart lies. Unlike several other top-level international tennis players who avoid tournaments such as the Hopman Cup, the Federation Cup and the Davis Cup because these events neither help with the WTA rankings nor bring in any moolah, Sania, like Andy Roddick of the US, has always been very keen to play for her country. What’s especially ironic is that this year she had to choose between representing India at the Hopman Cup in Perth for free or participating in a glamorous Asian invitational tournament for which she would have been paid a six-figure sum (in US dollars, not in Indian rupees!). She chose to play for India.

It is awfully poignant therefore that a young woman of Sania’s talent and temperament has to defend herself in front of the international media at the Australian Open by saying: “It (the flag case) is in court, but I just know that I would not do anything to (dishonour) my country. I love my country.”

The other worry in the family is that the relentless barrage of sensational stories Sania has been subjected to ever since she zoomed to stardom in 2005, from the silly hullabaloo about her short tennis skirt to the scrap over her entry into the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, may begin to sap her confidence and morale. Most of these off-court controversies, unfortunately, have been media-manufactured, with a little help, of course, from politicians, as in the Mecca Masjid case. But it’s impossible to build a firewall between the tennis star and the media frenzy — like most young people, Sania loves to surf the net.

In any case, it’s not as if she can escape thinking about her off-court problems by shutting out the media and doing what she loves to do most — play tennis. This year at the Australian Open, for instance, one top player greeted her solicitously with “Is everything going to be all right for you?” He was referring to the flag controversy.

Tennis, along with golf, is the only truly global sport. More than 225 countries compete in tennis at the highest level. So to play consistently at the very top level not only requires great ability but also extreme mental toughness. Sania has spoken about how the off-court controversies have begun to affect her game. When she lost her confidence midway through her match with Bacsinszky, the question uppermost in everyone’s mind was — is she wilting under pressure?

Imran knows, though, that even as a child his daughter was strong-willed. “She hates to lose, she’s always been a very tough kid,” he said, after she emerged from the brink of defeat to win the match. “She brings out her best when she’s close to losing. That’s when she really lifts her game.”

What also helps her game is the presence of vociferous fans, mostly Indian but as evident this year at the Australian Open, extending sometimes to other nationalities. (During her first round match with Iroda Tulyaganova of Uzbekistan, which she won 6-4,6-2, when an Indian teenager began rhythmically chanting “If you all love Sania, clap your hands”, not only did the entire South Asian contingent join in, but so did a few Uzbeks, including, to everyone’s delight, Tulyaganova herself from the court.)

As we sat in the bustle of Melbourne Park after Sania’s crucial second round victory, Imran began talking of her famous match against Svetlana Kuznetsova, currently world no. 2, in Dubai in 2005, and revealed something which I don’t think he has spoken about earlier.

Sania went into the match, which Imran rates as her best ever, with an injury. To make things worse, she twisted her ankle when she was 0-4, 30-40 down in the first set, necessitating a ten-minute stoppage of play. “She was in pain, and after play was stopped she told me she wanted to give up,” said Imran. “A huge crowd had showed up for the match, so I told her, ‘Just finish the set, and then quit.”’

She did more than that. She made history by vanquishing Kuznetsova, then the US Open Champion, 6-4, 6-2.

Today at the Australian Open, Sania comes up against another formidable hurdle — Venus Williams. She will be playing in the magnificent Rod Laver Arena. “I’m just going to go for it,” she said. “I’ve nothing to lose.” Her family, her friends and her supporters all over the world will be hoping Sania makes history once again.

The writer is a senior journalist