“I was very sad, because I hurt my back just before the meet, and I had been preparing for it for a year.

“I was not at a hundred per cent fitness before this tournament began, but strangely enough, the moment my match would begin, the pain disappeared.

“You could call it a kind of miracle,” she said, the smile evident in her tone.

Dipika’s current WISPA ranking is 64, and she hopes to enter the top 50 of the senior squash circuit by the end of the year.

“I am getting a lot of good match play by playing both senior and junior tournaments, and being around the top-ranked players in the world certainly helps.

“Now I am going to start preparing for the Asian Senior championship in February, and after that there is a WISPA tournament in France,” she added.

“The Asian juniors is coming up in May and I hope to do well there also.”