Indian badminton's glamour girl Jwala Gutta today rubbished the controversy surrounding Maria Sharapova, saying that the tennis great should not be criticised for not knowing Sachin Tendulkar since cricket was a game played in a few countries.
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.
"The controversy was really stupid. What is wrong if she does not know Tendulkar? Of course it's fair enough," Jwala said on the sidelines of a student felicitation programme at the Science City Auditorium.
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.
"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.
Jwala picked India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni as her "favourite cricketer".
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.
