“The autograph is dead,” legendary Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne had once quipped on Twitter.
He had been on a morning walk and fellow joggers had preferred taking selfies with him. So Warne had arrived at a conclusion that selfies were the new autographs.
In further evidence of this growing trend, tennis fans across the city on Wednesday traded pens and papers for smartphones as they jostled for space to be in the same frame as Venus Williams, Feliciano Lopez, Ramkumar Ramanathan and Thomas Enqvist.
The four players, part of the Bangalore Raptors’ team in the Champions Tennis League, had just arrived at a promotional event at the KSLTA but were soon shooting selfies with the 150-odd fans who had turned up at the team’s ‘open session’ a day before their opening tie against Pune Marathas.
Venus, a seven-time singles Grand Slam champion, even danced to a few tunes which were mimicked unsuccessfully by the triumvirate of Lopez, Ramanathan and Enqvist.
Later, addressing the crowd, she said she was happy to be back in Bengaluru.
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