Tendulkar had watched a few matches from the Royal Box at Wimbledon and when asked about cricket legend, the Russian beauty had said at a press conference that she did not know about him, causing a furore among Indian cricket fans.
"Cricket is played in 12 countries. Tennis is played in 200 countries and badminton in 150 countries. These are simple facts that I told you. Nobody even knows what cricket is in the US. You can't really blame Sharapova, don't know why it's a big controversy," ace doubles shuttler told PTI.
Jwala also spoke about the ongoing FIFA World Cup and said she's a big fan of Diego Maradona hence she would hope Argentina win the title tonight.
"I don't know many footballers except Maradona and Messi. Please don't create a Sharapova like controversy," she pleaded before adding: "I am not really following the World Cup due to the scheduling as I've practice in the morning.
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"But I am a big fan of Maradona so I will be hoping that Argentina win. It's been a long time that they won. When I grew up my dad used to give example of Maradona," she said.
She also gave a peptalk to students and said,"Failure and triumphs are parts of life. If you keep winning all the time, you may not learn a lot, but failure has a lot to teach. Instead of getting depressed, you should analyse your failure and strive to overcome.
"If I lose a match, I don't get sad or feel down. But if I lose a close match, I surely have sleepless nights. I always think and try to analyse what went wrong and rectify them.