Ankita Raina

Ankita Raina continued her fine form into the Fed Cup Asia/Oceania Zone group stage where she, along with veteran Sania Mirza, saw the Indian team through to its first-ever play-offs after beating the likes of Indonesia, South Korea and Chinese Taipei, among others.

Though the pandemic stopped the Indian tennis player in her tracks, Ankita was back on the circuit once competition resumed and went on to wrap up her season with the top prize at the ITF $100,000-plus event in Dubai.

Teaming up with Ekaterine Gorgodze of Georgia, they beat Spain's Aliona Bolsova and Kaja Juvan of Slovenia in a tense final for the crown. That victory saw Ankita Raina take her trophy count to 18 doubles titles on the ITF circuit.

The win also pushed her to the 117th position in the WTA doubles rankings chart, making her the best Indian in both the singles and the doubles rankings.

In 2019, Ankita Raina lined up against some of the top names in international tennis, including the former US Open champion Samantha Stosur, whom she beat for her first top-100 scalp and one of USA’s rising stars Coco Gauff.

Quality performances on the ITF circuit in 2018 saw Ankita Raina become only the fifth Indian to break into the top 200 on the WTA rankings while later she went on to clinch a bronze medal at the 2018 Asian Games, only the second Indian to do so after Sania Mirza.

For Ankita Raina, 2021 was a landmark year. The Indian tennis player marked her Grand Slam debut at the Australian Open in February in women’s doubles.

Ankita Raina ended the month by winning her maiden WTA 250 title - the women’s doubles at the Phillip Island Trophy - and breaking into the top 100 in women’s doubles rankings.

She also won the first WTA singles main draw match of her career at the same event, beating Italy’s Elisabetta Cocciaretto in the first round.

Ankita Raina’s progress was aptly rewarded with a spot at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Six-time Grand Slam champion Sania Mirza used her protected ranking of nine to make the women’s doubles cut at Tokyo 2020 and chose Ankita as her partner.

“It feels like a grand festival of sports, to get to see and be with athletes of different sports from India and outside, meet old friends, make new friendships,” Ankita enthused before taking the court in Japan.

Sania Mirza and Ankita Raina went down to the Kichenok sisters of Ukraine in the opening round after a tight contest.

However, competing at the Olympics was a big achievement for Ankita Raina, whose quest to play in the Summer Games began when she was just a toddler.

Born to a middle-class Kashmiri family in Ahmedabad, Ankita Raina took up tennis after accompanying her elder brother Ankur to a nearby court as a two-year-old. After a few years of being by the courtside, Ankita too was drawn into the sport.

While her elder brother couldn’t progress beyond the state-level competitions, Ankita Raina soon caught attention with her ability to win and win big right from the Under-8 level.

For Ankita Raina, her first break came when she competed at the Future Kids, a talent hunt conducted by the All India Tennis Association (AITA).

While the organisers were reluctant to enter her into the competition as she was only eight and the competition was an under-10 event, Ankita Raina found herself in the mix after her brother managed to convince the authorities. She went on to win the title by beating the then Maharashtra No. 1 Surabhi Varma.

Ankita Raina then devoted the following years to shaping her career with multiple wins at the age-group level. The Ahmedabad athlete also moved her base to Pune to train under the well-known coach Hemant Bendre.

The next big step in Ankita Raina’s career came in 2007 when turned up for the Under-14 Asian Tennis Series in 2007.

The competition format stipulated that participants play a certain number of national and international events in Asia with the top eight at the end of the season making it to the grand finale at Melbourne Park, the venue of the Australian Open, the season’s opening Grand Slam.

Here, Ankita made the most of the opportunity to not only make it to Australia but also finish as Asia No. 2 following a loss in the final.

Having gained enough confidence for her international foray, Ankita took the plunge and turned pro in 2009.

Since her Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, Ankita Raina has firmly established herself as one of India's top bet in women's singles and has also started making a mark in the ITF doubles circuit. The Indian made it to nine doubles finals in 2022, winning five of them, before adding two more titles to her name in 2023. She also competed at the Asian Games 2023 in Hangzhou.

Ankita could not make the cut for the Paris 2024 Olympics.