Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik

Hyderabad, April 10: Friday was to be their wedding night but Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik spent it playing dumb charades and carom.

“Last night, the two families (brides’ and grooms’) played dumb charades and antakshari. Chinese cuisine… was made by her aunts and served for dinner,” said the Mirzas’ friend Rucha Naik

Dumb charades can provide useful practice for domesticity, with the partners trying to read each other’s minds through signs, but it’s the licence for silence that would have appealed to the harried couple the most after days of media controversy over their marriage.

The Mirzas today appointed Naik their spokesperson. “The idea is to keep the media well informed following the recent developments,” a family friend said in a reference to yesterday’s wedding botch-up.

The couple were to marry on Friday but the qazi declined after Shoaib failed to produce his passport, impounded by police.

Instead, the brides’ and grooms’ families whiled the evening away by playing three games of carom against each other. India apparently triumphed over Pakistan — “the bride’s team won three games in a row”, the family friend said.

The wedding feast aborted, Sania had to be content with a helping of her favourite junk food, bhelpuri. It had to be brought home since the couple have stopped stepping outside together after community elders in both countries criticised their visits to ice-cream parlours and shops.

Another controversy broke out today — over, of all things, the name of Shoaib’s father — before it was stubbed out. The Mirzas’ invitation to 1,000 guests for the April 15 reception mentioned “Malik Faqir Hussain” while in the talaknama he had signed with Ayesha Siddiqui, Shoaib had given his father’s name as “Malik Saleem Hussain”.

Local TV channels had a field day over the mismatch before the lapse was corrected in the invite. “Faqir is my father’s pet name,” Shoaib explained.

The families, however, seem a little relieved that the weeklong dust over Shoaib’s first marriage with Ayesha is finally settling down. Celebrations gained momentum at the Mirzas’ Jubilee Hills home today, with strains of music wafting out and footfalls by relatives and friends picking up.

Preparations are now on for the April 13 Sangeet ceremony, which will be led by ghazal exponent Talat Aziz. The bride and the groom are expected to perform a salsa on the occasion, for which they have been practising during the week.

Dance troupes have been hired from Mumbai and Rajasthan to brighten up the event, to be held at the ballroom of Taj Krishna hotel.