I’m not sure I know of anyone who wants to see Maria Sharapova lose. Any time. Anywhere. She’s just so personable and so cute. And she had that shoulder surgery a few years ago, and she’s battled her way back to relevance after being No. 1 while still a teenager.

And when she was playing for the Australian Open women’s championship against Victoria Azarenka today, I’m going to guess that, oh … 98.6 percent of all people aware of the match wanted Sharapova to win. Not because they dislike Azarenka; they probably hardly know her. But because they like Maria Sharapova.

The 1.4 percent who wanted Az to win in Oz? Fans of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. They were thrilled when Azarenka won.

Why should that be?

Because Azarenka is planning to play in the WTA tournament in Dubai, three weeks hence, and Sharapova is not.

With Azarenka winning, Dubai is likely to have the world No. 1-ranked player in their field. Had Sharapova won, she would have been No. 1, with a fairly good chance to keep that ranking at least for a month — and Dubai would not be able to say the tournaments there (the men come in the following week) each feature the world’s No. 1 player.

The Dubai women’s tournament is particularly loaded with top-10 players. No fewer than eight of them, the absences being Sharapova, who will be ranked No. 3 next week, and No. 10, Andrea Petkovic.

But it’s a lot more fun to promote yourself as a women’s tournament with “eight of the top 10, including new No. 1 Victoria Azarenka!”

I imagine the organizers in Dubai also have done the math, trying to figure out if Rafael Nadal can regain the No. 1 men’s ranking from Novak Djokovic, starting by beating him in the Oz final tomorrow. I’d think not, because his lead was sizable, but …

Dubai doesn’t want Nadal to be No. 1, because he’s taking off the entire month of February, including the Dubai men’s tournament. Djokovic, however, plans to play.

As do Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga …

Funny, how differently you look at things when you have a dog in the hunt. It becomes possible to want keenly for Victoria Azarenka to defeat Russia’s sweetheart, Maria Sharapova.