Divij Sharan and Samantha Murray: Life partners fulfil dream to team up at Wimbledon

Divij Sharan's love affair with Wimbledon dates back to 2013 when he along with Purav Raja qualified for the main draw only to be knocked out in the first round. It took eight years for the Delhi born tennis player to once again earn himself a place in the main draw however this time around he had a different partner to play along with at the prestigious Grand Slam tournament. Sharan took to the court at Wimbledon along with his British wife Samantha Murray Sharan however the duo failed to go deep into the tournament after losing to Croatia's Darija Jurak and South Africa's Raven Klaasen in the mixed doubles second round encounter of Wimbledon 2021. The Indo-British pair lost the match 6-3, 6-7,3-6. The first time these two played together at Wimbledon was in 2014, but did not get into the mixed doubles main draw.

About Divij Sharan and Samantha Murray

Divij and Samantha first met each other in 2012 through their doubles partners at a tournament following which they did not see each other again for about six months. Recollecting the first meeting between the two Samantha Murray Sharan said, “I was training at a tournament where he was playing just before the women’s tournament. I ended up there on my own, so I ended up practising with him and his group for the week before. We just spent a lot of time together over the next few months and now here we are.”

The couple after being together for eight years tied the knot on 19 July 2019 in Manchester and 23 November 2019 in New Delhi. 
She added, "Neither of us are particularly outgoing, so we’re still not sure how we managed to first speak to each other, but one of us managed to puck up the courage I think, so it worked out well!”.  While the COVID pandemic had brought the sport of tennis to a standstill the couple continued to train together. 

Speaking on the time spent training together Sharan said  “Both of us play tennis, and we were sort of stuck together. For other tennis players, it wasn’t possible to play with other people, so we had the chance to help each other out and just to train. We were training together doing volleys to volleys in the back garden and stuff like that.”

Samantha on the prospect of teaming up with her husband in future

Speaking about playing together on the professional circuit Murray Sharan said  “Obviously the Slams and some of the bigger tournaments are together, but for quite a few years we’ve been playing at somewhat different levels. I’ve been playing maybe just below the main Tour. Even then, a lot of the events are not mixed, so whenever we do have a chance to play the tournament and it works for both our schedules, we try and make sure we can take that chance.”

Image: @Divij Sharan/ @Tennis_Phil/ Twitter