Sania Mirza World

BANGALORE: Sania Mirza is back on the tennis court, cracking forehands - pain free. Only two months ago, scenes of the big-hitting 21-year-old making a premature exit from the Olympic Games in a pool of tears were flashed from Beijing. Sania was frustrated as much by the physical pain as with the hopelessness of her situation.

The situation then, was worse than spectators, fans and even connoisseurs had imagined. The pain was so bad that Sania couldn't even lift a fork, let alone wield a tennis racquet. However, the cure has been quick and almost miraculous, thanks to a 26-year-old physiotherapist who practices the nascent South Korean science of spiral therapy, which is cell regeneration.

Shortly after the Olympic Games, Sania was in a private hell, doctors
were clueless, the pain was bad and the forecast, dismal. That's when she got a call from star Indian cricketer Yuvraj Singh, who urged the striking Hyderabadi to give physiotherapist Jatin Chaudhry's treatment a shot.

"Yuvi told me that there was this doctor who could cure me in seven to ten days," Sania told TOI. "The call came at a time when I was staring surgery in the face for the second time in six months and thinking, that's another year of my tennis gone. I had gone to the best doctors in the world, had surgery and nothing was working. Sometimes, I couldn't even feel my little finger, the pain was numbing. Yuvi told me that Jatin fixed his shoulder in ten minutes, and that it could work for me too.

After the Olympics, Sania's management team, headed by father Imran, had flown in top notch Aussie physiotherapist Amir Takla, who finally deduced the problem as a post surgery complication, possibly due to poor rehabilitation. Sania's joints are hyper mobile (excessively flexible), which is the reason why she cracks such a powerful, wristy forehand. However, post-surgery - in Miami in April - the scar tissue that had grown over the wound was too thick and it cost her mobility.

Takla was of the view that Sania needed to go in for another surgery in which the scar tissue could be scraped off so that the wrist would regain 100 percent mobility. He couldn't, however, guarantee that the wrist would regain full mobility even after surgery. But surgery, along with a cortisone shot, was her best option.