Spanish football supporters usually spend half-time queueing for toilets and tortillas or complaining about the referee, so imagine the surprise of fans at Seville’s match against Real Madrid on Saturday evening when Jelena Jankovic, the world No 3, strolled on to the pitch and began knocking a tennis ball around with Pablo Alfaro, the former Seville defender.

The gimmick was part of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour’s brave new world of innovation and the Serb with a smile, who became the darling of Centre Court when she won the mixed doubles with Jamie Murray at Wimbledon this year, became the querida of the 42,000 fans inside the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán stadium.

The short skirt may have helped, but the experiment was so successful that Dee Dutta, the head of global marketing at Sony Ericsson, has targeted a repeat of the ploy at the FA Cup Final. “We wanted to get tennis to a big audience,” he said. “Tennis has a lot of assets and it’s about being creative and marketing its different elements. I would love to do it in the middle of the FA Cup Final, but I need the English FA to agree.”

Dutta’s vision does not stop at Wembley. He wants Monday night football to be followed by Tuesday night tennis, he talks of a “Fed Cup fortnight” and he intends to expand night tennis — a phenomenon in which players don fluorescent outfits and play in the pitch black of a nightclub with top DJs providing the soundtrack. The first event of its kind was held in Miami, Florida, in March and 17,000 people turned up.

“I have never believed that sponsorship is about handing over a cheque,” he said. “Tennis has to compete to get the attention of an 18-year-old. They might think, ‘Am I going to play with my PlayStation? Am I going to watch the football? Am I going to go to the pub? To a nightclub?’ Tennis is low down their list of priorities. So I took a decision to start night tennis. It has all the right cues for young people. Surely tennis is a bit more encouraging than Big Brother.”

Dutta is adamant that, while glamour does the sport no harm — the eight players at the Sony Ericsson Championships were pictured in seductive poses wearing Hugo Boss for the event’s official photograph, while Maria Sharapova has been asked more questions about her outfit than her forehand — its roots go much deeper than that. He maintains that, were it not for the pioneering efforts of individuals such as Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, the sport would not enjoy its present global appeal.

“We need to get away from the [Anna] Kournikova effect in women’s tennis,” Dutta said. “Of course, there is glamour and beauty, but there is much more to it than that. We live in a world of celebrities and personalities and the story is often the person because tennis is an individual sport, but there is an over-emphasis on glamour and not enough on performance.”

The strength of Justine Henin’s performance spoke for itself last night as she extended her winning streak to 21 matches with a 6-1, 7-6 victory over Anna Chakvetadze. The Russian, who is making her debut at this tournament, let her nerves get the better of her in the first set but fought back well in the second to rattle the world No 1 from Belgium. But Henin plays the important points with such hunger and her wonderful backhand secured victory with her first match point.

“I need to find my rhythm as I didn’t serve well in the second set,” Henin, who will finish the year as world No 1 regardless of how she fares here, said. “I will take it one match at a time but I have a lot of motivation to go all the way here.”

Sharapova, who started serving in practice only a week ago because of a shoulder injury, made heavy work of her first victory since the US Open last night with a 6-4, 7-5 triumph over Daniela Hantuchova, of Slovakia.