Her breezy optimism as she took on some of the world's top players endeared her to her compatriots: for just as India was beginning to emerge as a world power, here was a young woman displaying a brazen determination to shake off the shackles of the underdog. Off-court, too, her confidence was striking. Confounding stereotypes of demure and retiring Indian femininity, she delighted in brash displays of adolescent attitude.

She is the highest ranked female tennis player ever from India, with a career high ranking of 27 in singles and 7 in doubles. She knows from her early experiences about the hardships that tennis players from India have to endure in order to become a successful professional. She had a long cherished vision for Tennis in India. The Vision - "To pave a way for Indian Tennis by training and promoting urban and rural talent and to enable our players to make a significant mark in the world of international tennis."

A couple of weeks ago, the 21-year-old was photographed with her feet up while watching a colleague playing in an international exhibition match in Perth, and the proximity of her toes to a nearby Indian flag raised temperatures in her home state to vindaloo levels.

She was conferred with the prestigious Padma Shri award for her contribution to tennis on the eve [25 January 2006] of the Republic Day.

We are proud of her achievement. In India there are not many other young female role models like her.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful Indian maiden, of course.

She went back to her home country to be with her family and got involved in post-revolution social work, and more recently promoting female participation in the electoral process.

She says she was the only south Indian actress who could speak Hindi without a South Indian accent, at the time.

She is the pride of Hyderabad and hoped she would soon become No 1 player from her fifth position. The government would extend all support to provide her best training and other facilities.

Women are made to feel grateful for progress but there is still so much to be done to reach equity (& that isn't just equal pay). Players associations are a vital part of reaching this. India women will dominate the global stage when as much thought goes into their game as the men

But in a time and age when it was uncommon for women to ascend the throne and vanquish foes by leading forces in battle, Rudrama Devi charted for herself an indelible place in the annals of the country.

I am home, she thought, and stopped in wonder at the thought. I am home, I am home, she thought; now to climb.

India is the country that produced such cultured male players as Vijay Amritraj and Ramesh Krishnan, and she might have been expected to place as much emphasis on old-style craft as crunch. In fact, her all-out aggression, underpinned by the sort of destructive forehand that was the signature of her role model Steffi Graf's game, makes her a very contemporary player indeed. To become a top-10 player, she has to work on her mobility and add some dimension to a game that is too dependent on the weighty forehand.

One of the thrills of playing at the top tennis centres of the world is to see the Indian flag go up whenever I`m participating in these events. That's enough motivation for any Indian who has the opportunity to perform at these tournaments.