SPORTS

Biography of Ankit Raina

Ankita Ravinderkrishan Raina (born 11 January 1993) is an Indian tennis player. Since 2013, he has been India’s first singles and doubles player.

Raina has won one title on the WTA tour and one of 125 WTA tournaments (both doubles), as well as 11 singles titles and 24 doubles titles on the ITF tour..

Ankita Raina’s Sports Career:

2008-2016:

When Raina was five years old, she started playing tennis. He is coached by Hemant Bendrey, known for his strict discipline and opinion. As a teenager, he made his professional debut in 2009, at the ITF junior tournament in Mumbai. He continued to participate in regional ITF events with no success in 2010. Her 2011 season saw her qualify for the ITF doubles circuit tournament, defeating fellow countrywoman Aishwarya Agrawal. He won his first professional singles title in New Delhi and won three more in doubles in 2012. 2017:

Ankita Raina won two matches at the Mumbai Open, and reached the quarterfinals. It’s his tough competition. He reached a world rank of 181 in April 2018.

After winning the $25,000 title, she became the fifth Indian to enter the top 200 women’s rankings. This was followed by Nirupama Sanjeev, Sania Mirza, Shikha Uberoi and Sunitha Rao.

2018:

Ankita Raina won the bronze medal at the Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia in the individual category in August 2018. Sania Mirza and Ankita are the only players representing India to have won a team award at the Asian Games.

That same year later, he won the biggest doubles title of his career at the Taipei Challenger. He teamed up with his co-star Karman Kaur Thandi.

2019:

Raina won the $25,000 title in Singapore, with an emphatic victory over Arantxa Rus in the final. She earned her first top 100 win at the Kunming Open, beating former US Open champion and top 10 player Samantha Stosur.

Ankita Raina got the biggest win of his career. At Roland Garros, she lost her first qualifying match against the famous American teenager Coco Gauff in two tough sets, despite playing well. with his partner Rosalie van der Hoek in October 2011. It is currently coached by Arjun Kadhe. He is also his trainer and beater.

2020:

She had a disappointing result at the Australian Open. He was sick from the Australian bushfires. However, Ankita found double success by winning back-to-back ITF titles in Nonthaburi alongside Bibiane Schoofs.

This was followed by a first WTA Tour semi-final at the Thailand Open alongside Rosalie. This gave him the new career rank of No. 119 and double.

In early 2020, he won two men’s singles titles, one in Nonthaburi and the other in Jodhpur, India. He helped India qualify for the Fed Cup World Group 2 tournament for the first time in history in April 2020 in Dubai.

They are Sania Mirza, Rutuja Bhosale, Riya Bhatia and Sowjanya Bavisetti. Raina returned to the competition when the tour resumed in September after a long hiatus due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

There he suffered an exit from the ITF tournament while playing after a break. In 2020, she participated in the French Open where she reached the second and first rounds but was defeated by Kurumi Nara.

That same year, in December, Raina won the biggest ITF doubles title of her career in Dubai, along with Ekaterine Gorgodze. After that, he achieved a new career high – a double high of 117.

2021:

In 2021, Ankita Raina has entered all Grand Slam and Olympic tournaments but had a first round exit in the doubles. He also competed in mixed doubles at Wimbledon, but that was also a first-round exit. In 2021 at the Australian Open, she played her best career at a major tournament, defeating Olga Danilović in the third and final round. Then she became the fourth player representing India to participate in the main draw of the Grand Slam tournament (after Nirupama Mankad, Nirupama Sanjeev and Sania Mirza).

Ankita Raina won the first WTA Tour singles match of her career at the Philip Island Trophy. In doubles, she partnered with Kamilla Rakhimova to reach her first WTA final. There, they defeated the Russian couple Anastasia Potapova and Anna Blinkova. With this win, she became the second Indian woman after Sania Mirza to win a WTA title. She is also the third Indian woman after Mirza and Shikha Uberoi to enter the top 100 in the WTA rankings, debuting at 94 countries in both worlds. .

Her good ranking allowed her to compete regularly on the WTA tour without success. At the French Open, he won in the second qualifying round and singles. He had a strong court season in doubles, reaching the semi-finals back to back at the Nottingham Open and the Nottingham Trophy. At Wimbledon, Ankita Raina participated in all three tournaments, but lost in the first round of singles qualifying against Varvara Lepchenko and in the first round of mixed doubles, with Lauren Davis and Ramkumar Ramanathan. together.

Ankita Raina’s dream of playing in the Olympics is now a reality

Every athlete has one dream in common: to be able to play in the Olympics and make their country proud. Similarly, Ankita Raina, who is about 5ft 4in tall, also carried those big dreams soon after picking up a racquet at the age of 5. Belonging to the Kashimiri-Pandit family, Ankita Raina’s interest in tennis grew after she saw her brother, Ankur Raina playing at a nearby club. An Ahmedabad girl, Ankita Raina’s prowess as a tennis player was discovered soon after she won the U-10 Future Talents tennis tournament organized by the All India Tennis Association when she was just 8 years old. Possessing drive and passion for the game, Ankita Raina soon moved to Pune to focus more on her tennis career. Trained by Hemant Bendre at the PYC Hindu Gymkhana in Pune, Raina slowly rose through the ranks of tennis. After Sania Mirza, Raina is definitely the next big star in Indian women’s tennis.

Turning professional in 2009, Ankita Raina has many trophies to her credit, having collected at least 11 ITF titles, 250 WTA titles, 125k more WTA titles. Currently ranked world No. 95 and two in the world 181 in singles, Ankita Raina’s biggest moment of glory came at the 2018 Asian Games where she grabbed the bronze medal.

By receiving the honour, Raina became only the second Indian tennis player to do so after the first international number one at the doubles, Sania Mirza. Also, the duo of Sania Mirza and Ankita Raina boasted a 5-0 Fed Cup winning streak and led India to their first match at the event. Mirza, who has an injury-free world ranking of 9 and qualified for his fourth Olympics, was given the freedom to choose any Indian player in the top 300 to partner with in Tokyo.

Considering Raina and Mirza’s unbeaten streak in the Fed Cup, it is only natural that Mirza would choose the Gujarat-born player. Due to training together in the UK after Wimbledon ended, the Mirza-Raina duo may be the only pair representing India in tennis at the Tokyo Olympics this year.

With the current atmosphere surrounding the possibility of Rohan Bopanna-Divij Sharan qualifying, it looks like Sania Mirza and Ankita Raina will defend India’s hopes as they bid for a second tennis medal for the country. India, so far, has only one medal in the sport starting with the bronze medal at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 by 18-time Grand Slam champion Leander Paes.