Maria Sharapova finding her way back to the top is special

Nike, one of Maria Sharapova’s main sponsors, just brought out a new advert to celebrate their girl’s return to grand slam glory and the #1 ranking. It reads “Those Who Belong at the Top Never Forget Their Way Back”. Nike have got the story the precisely the wrong way around. Maria’s return to the top after years in the wilderness is so thrilling, so heartening, because so many who belong at the top lose their footing momentarily, and then never find their way back. The complete narrative arc - of young glory, years in the wilderness, and a triumphant return – is rare. Returning to the top is even harder than staying at the top. The natural course is for young glory to melt away into a career of middling mediocrity, or worse.

Perhaps I’m conditioned to expect gifted youngsters to go slip-slidin’ away into nothing because of the scars I carry as a long-suffering supporter of the Indian cricket team.

Laxman Sivaramakrishnan

To me, one of the greatest moments in cricket history happened in the Benson and Hedges Cup finals at the MCG in 1985, when Javed Miandad was stumped by Sadanand Vishwanath off Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, to top off a glorious Australian campaign for both young men. India beat Pakistan, Sunil Gavaskar held aloft the trophy, the team lapped the MCG in Ravi Shastri’s Audi...all of creation was shouting out that the Sadanand and Siva belonged at the top. Yet, after that golden start, both Sadanand and LS tragically lost their way, like Maninder Singh, Raman Lamba, Surinder Amarnath, Vinod Kambli, Salil Ankola, Abey Kuruvilla, Vivek Razdan, Sadagoppan Ramesh, Praveen Amre and Narendra Hirwani, potentially like Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan, Ishant Sharma and Sreesanth. I’m painfully used to seeing talented youngsters, who had glorious starts to their careers, burn out or fade away.

Tracy Austin

Tennis too has had its share of shining young stars who don’t go on to achieve very much. Tracy Austin once looked like Chris Evert’s heir. Chris Evert won eighteen slams, Tracy won her second and last grand slam when she was nineteen. Andrea Jeager, another of Chris Evert's heirs, didn’t manage even one. Gabriela Sabatini won just one slam, disappointing for someone long considered Steffi Graf's peer. Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic rose to world #1 and fell back into the pack without winning a single slam, Ana Ivanovic managed one. Anastasia Myskina pipped Maria Sharapova to become the first Russian to win a slam when she won the French Open in 2004, a month before Maria beat Serena Williams to win Wimbledon. Anastasia Myskina hasn’t won a slam since, and hasn’t played professional tennis since 2007.

There are exceptions, of course. Zaheer Khan returned from the wilderness to spearhead India to the #1 test ranking and the World Cup. Jennifer Capriati showed real character in winning three slams after kicking her well-reported drug problems. Kim Clisters is justly one of tennis’ favourite players, for coming back from retirement, and motherhood, to win back-to-back US Opens. Regardless, the pattern of young stars quickly fading away is strong and persistent.

So, when Maria Sharapova won back to-back slams in 2008, had shoulder surgery, and vanished from view, I assumed she was following that established pattern. This was an especially easy assumption to make about Maria, since she had every opportunity to follow in the footsteps of her compatriot Anna Kournikova, and settle for the plush life of an A-list celebrity, earning many millions endorsing designer handbags and wrist watches. I darkly suspect Caroline Wozniacki is making peace with that kind of mediocrity: she just launched a range of designer undergarments, branded the Caroline Wozniacki Collection.

Fortunately for tennis, Maria didn’t settle for mediocrity. She looked within, and said yeh dil maange more. Fortunately for tennis, Maria Sharapova found the spunk, the guts, the gumption and the game to deliver on her fierce desire. Ave Maria!

Is Mark Zuckerberg richer than Mr Darcy?

This picture of Mark Zuckerberg’s wedding with Priscilla Chan was one of the few truly heart warming images from the last few weeks. This picture was so heart-warming because I learnt something new: I didn’t know Zuckerberg’s girlfriend was Asian. This knowledge re-framed the Zuckerberg wedding for me, as a fellow Asian. This isn’t just another wedding photo any more. It is now the picture of every Tiger Mom’s most fervent dream coming true. Dennis and Yvonne Chan, ex-refugee immigrants who ran a Chinese takeaway in Boston, must be so happy with their multi-billionaire son-in-law. How nice for them!

As my heart warmed to the Chan family’s good fortune, I started slipping into an authentic Tiger Mom mindset, and some more tough-minded thoughts took shape. A good Tiger Mom would do some rigorous competitive benchmarking. She would ask herself, “Mark Zuckerberg is a nice boy, but is he really rich enough for Priscilla? Is he as rich as Mrs. Bennet's son-in-law, Mr. Darcy? You know, the one they want to marry Elizabeth off to?”

It turns out Mrs Chan need not have worried, her son-in-law compares very well with Mrs Bennet’s son-in-law. Jane Austen tells us that Mr Darcy had an income of ten thousand pounds per year, in 1810, in England. Converted into today’s money, that is about $600,000 per year. That is a tidy income, but feels distinctly imaginable, more affluent-professional than masters-of-the-universe, certainly not the kind of money that animates the Occupy Wall Street movement. A self respecting Tiger Mom would wish more for her children.

So, is that game, set and match to Mrs Chan? Was Mr Darcy really no better off than assorted corporate vice presidents? Mr Darcy owned half of Derbyshire and employed a vast domestic staff, but he couldn’t buy an asprin, or watch the World Cup finals on HDTV. Can one really compare his situation to ours? To whatever extent comparisons are possible, it seems like our living standards have improved so much that millions of upper middle class professionals enjoy a quality of life that is equivalent to that of the most privileged landed aristocrats just two hundred years ago, which is a comforting thought in these troubled times.

Mrs. Bennet’s partisans might argue that relative income matters more than absolute income. This is reasonable. Behavioural economics and evolutionary biology suggest that people care more about status than about absolute living standards. Mr Darcy was high status, certainly higher status than the armies of contemporary upper middle class professionals who share his living standards. But how does his relative income or status compare with Mark Zuckerberg?

The American academic James Heldman tells us that Mr Darcy’s income of 10,000 pounds per year was 300 times the per capita income in his day. The per capita income in today’s America is $48,000, so a contemporary Mr Darcy would make approximately $15 million per annum, which is starting to feel appropriately rarified. Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune is at least $10 billion. If that earns risk free returns of 2% p.a., that is an income of $200 million, which is an order of magnitude more than what our contemporary Mr Darcy makes.

James Heldman also refers to the economic historian G.E. Mingay, who estimates that there were only 400 families among the landed gentry of England with an income in the range of 5,000 to 50,000 pounds per annum, with the average being about 10,000. To keep things simple, lets say that puts Mr Darcy in at about the 200th richest man in his England. Mark Zuckerberg is the 14th richest person in his America, trumping Mr Darcy once again, without any fiddly adjustments for the larger population in today’s America. However one looks at the numbers, our contemporary Tiger Mom Mrs. Chan has outperformed the proto-Tiger Mom Mrs. Bennet.

At this point, the top performing Tiger Mom in the jungle would need to pause, offer the other Tiger Moms a cup of tea, and initiate a conversation about how money doesn’t really matter, that there are many qualitative things like character and compatiability that make a marriage successful. This blog would like to join the Tiger Moms in drinking a cup of tea. This blog would also like to wish all happiness to the newlyweds Mark and Priscilla. May they play many Limca Cuts.