“I just remembered the mindset I had on court in Dubai, and we just decided to be aggressive,” she said, moments after she and Prarthana Thombare won the deciding doubles rubber in the tie against South Korea to secure the playoff berth.

This was a good chance for India to take a step up the ladder in the women’s premier team competition. They were playing at home and Asian powerhouses China and Japan were not playing (both were competing in the upper tiers). And for the first time, as captain Vishal Uppal put it, the team had great depth in singles.

With hard-hitters Shrivalli Bhamidipaty, Sahaja Yamalapalli and Vaidehi Chaudhari present, defensive baseliner Raina’s role changed. She is the India No.1 singles player, but was tasked with playing doubles throughout the competition. She and Thombare blew hot and cold during the week, losing three of their five matches. But they still delivered in the matches against Thailand and Korea where the doubles rubber proved decisive for the tie.

In many ways, the achievement in Pune was a team effort and Raina, as she happily clutched her medal on Friday, had added another feather to her cap.

Raina emerged from a middle-class family with the hope of making a name for herself in an expensive sport.

“There were people who told my mother to her face that I should not be in the sport given our financial background,” Raina told HT in Pune. “It’s none of their business. But looking at where I started, where I come from, the family background, I feel blessed to have come such a long way.”

Now 32, Raina has been India’s top singles player for most part of the last decade. She is the most capped (50 ties) and most successful Indian in singles (21 wins) at the Billie Jean King Cup – formerly called the Fed Cup. On the tour, she has played in the singles qualifiers of all the Grand Slams and made the main draw in all four in doubles. She also has a singles bronze medal from the 2018 Asian Games.

There are limitations to her game with no clear weapon off either wing, but her mentality and fitness has been her biggest strength, helping her reach a career high ranking of 160 in March, 2020.

“It’s natural to feel that you could have done more; you are never satisfied, and you want more and more,” she said. “But it couldn’t have been any other way. There will always be thoughts that I could and should have done something in a specific match, but I believe that you reap what you sow.”

She is a seasoned campaigner now. While the younger generation of Indian players have started to show promise, Raina has been there and done that.

“I know what it takes to get there – perseverance and persistence,” she said. “Playing under pressure and being in the race of wanting to do many things, you can lose your authenticity. But you have to believe in yourself and stick to your game because that is what helped you get where you are.”

She carries lessons from the struggles of her early days. Financial restrictions have meant she has travelled alone to play abroad since she was 12 years old.

“I remember my first trip was to Sri Lanka for a team event,” she said. “I was nervous. When I first saw the food cooked in coconut oil, I thought it was hair oil because that’s all I had known it to be.”

She has come a long way since then, and perhaps overachieved given the resources she started off with. But she is not content.

“My mother feels that I have the potential to still become world No.1,” she added. “The conviction with which she says that makes me want to put in the work all the time to get to that potential.”

By now, the medal from Pune would have been stored safely and Raina would have shifted her attention back to her pursuits on the tour. Over the last week, she was not the biggest name to emerge from Indian women’s tennis – that honour goes to Shrivalli, who won each of her five singles matches.

But how Raina glided across court, and the aggression she showed in strokes, she remains a force to reckon with.