Juan Ignacio Chela may have “towelled” Lleyton Hewitt, as one India newspaper put it, and knocked him out of the Australian Open, Mary Pierce may have had a bad match and lost badly to Iveta Benesova, and Martina Hingis may be marching her way to the quarterfinals, but the only person India cares about is Sania Mirza, the young woman from Hyderabad.

On the fuzzy screen in my hotel rom in Chennai, India, Sania’s matches are shown in prime time. Unfortunately for India, Sania is now gone from the tournament so they will have to turn their attention elsewhere. Leander Paes from Calcutta and Mahesh Bhupathi from Bangalore are still alive in the doubles with their partners. That will have to do for now.

You can understand the excitement. Mirza is the first Indian woman to be seeded in this tournament and, at age 19, she has a lot of potential. She recently made a smart move by hiring Tony Roche to work with her part-time, presumable when he is not working with his other part-timer, Roger Federer.

Mirza struggled in the first set of her first round match against 16 year-old Victoria Azarenka. Wearing a Dominik Hrbaty shirt – it has a vent between the shoulder blades, an interesting choice considering that Mirza is a Muslim and Muslims usually favor conservative clothing – Mirza served for the first set at 5-4. When Azarenka was not throwing fits, she was hitting a lot of winners. She hit a return winner to get a break point and won the game to even the set at 5-5. She hit another return winner in Mirza’s next service game to go up 6-5.

The problem is Mirza’s serve. Her first serve is errant and her second serve is weak. Most tennis players are slightly off-vertical when they make contact with the ball on their serve – Andy Roddick is the exception, he is straight up which contributes to the power of his serve – but Mirza appears to fall away from the ball. She has a very strong forehand and good court coverage but she will have to improve her serve if she wants to move up the rankings.

Mirza managed to break Azarenka at the end of the first set to get into the tiebreak, which she won 8-6, then, at the start of the second set, she played much more aggressively and took the set easily at 6-2. In the future, she might want to use that strategy earlier in a match.

In her second round match against Michaella Krajicek, Mirza not only had problems with her serve but she also couldn’t keep her forehand in the court. Krajicek may be only 17 years old but she’s strategically smart. After winning the first set 6-3, she started to attack Mirza’s forehand which forced Mirza into even more errors and left her standing with her hands on her hips looking up at Tony Roche as if to say, “You’re my coach, tell me what to do!”

Krajicek broke Mirza to go up 4-2 then gave the break right back but she stayed with her strategy and it payed off. Serving at 5-6, Mirza hit a double fault to give Krajicek a match point then hit yet another forehand error to give Krajicek the match, 6-3, 7-5.

Krajicek is another promising youngster. She has a good first and second serve and good strokes off both sides. She’s currently ranked 43rd in the world while Mirza is ranked number 32. It will be interesting to see which of these two players has the higest ranking at the end of the year.

Sorry India, my money is on Krajicek.