Australian Open 2012 live stream

In the world of fashion, everything makes a comeback. Skinny jeans, oversized sunglasses, bubble skirts, high-waisted jeans. Need I continue?

bet365 is live streaming all Australian Open 2010 games - Go to bet365 > Live Streaming > Tennis to watch a live stream

It seems the tennis world is no different. Ladies and gentlemen, this tournament’s ‘it’ girl is not a new 16-year-old prodigy plucked from some obscure town thousands of miles away that you’ve never heard of; no, it’s that other Russian Maria, the one who used to be the face of Stella McCartney for adidas – Maria Kirilenko.

Kirilenko kicked off her week in her terms, “loud” by defeating her friend, former No.1 and Australian Open 2008 champion, Maria Sharapova.

It was the upset that few saw coming, followed by a second-round win over Austria’s Yvonne Meusburger and a straight-sets third-round triumph over Roberta Vinci has kept the free-swinging Russian in the public eye until almost the second week.

Today she takes on countrywoman and world No.2 Dinara Safina, a tough task indeed. If she wins, she’ll be through to the fourth round and will equal her best result at a Grand Slam to date - she also made the fourth round here in 2008.

But back to ‘Makiri’, as she’s known to her friends and fans.

Born in Moscow, she started to play tennis at the age of five and was later enrolled in “Dinamo” Moscow Central Stadium, where she started to hone her game. When she was 12, she was noticed practising by former player Elena Brioukhovets, who set about putting together a team who would propel Kirilenko to the WTA tour.

Within three years, she was the best in her age group. She won the US Open juniors in 2002 as a 15-year-old, and played her first WTA events the same year.

Her first win on the tour came in Beijing in 2005 as an 18-year-old, and she’s won a further four titles since, including three in 2008. But in 2009, a knee injury and increasing off-court commitments curtailed her results, her best being a final in Barcelona where she lost to Vinci.

Already this year she has made the quarter-finals in Auckland and looks to be back on track.

Kirilenko’s breakthrough year came in 2005, when she slashed her ranking from 111 at the beginning of the year to finish the season ranked 25th in the world. Her first stint in the top 20 would follow in 2006.

One of 15 Russians currently housed in the top 100 (at present she’s ranked No.58 – 11th on the list), Kirilenko is regularly referred to as “the other Maria”, in comparison to her good friend and namesake Sharapova, who she regularly features with in top 10 lists that aren’t exactly related to tennis ...

Surprisingly, Kirilenko doesn’t refer to the jealousy in the locker room that Ana Ivanovic complained about in the lead-up to Wimbledon 2009: “There's really not much friendship between the girls on tour," Ivanovic told Charlotte Methven of the Mail on Sunday.

"There's so much rivalry and jealousy, so everyone just hangs out in their own camp. In the locker room and players' lounge, you can feel the jealousy.”

But Kirilenko paints a very different picture. “I'm friend with everybody, you know. All the locker room are my friends.”

So what makes Maria an ‘it’ girl again? One way of telling is by the number of interview requests a player receives. And since that unexpected win on Monday, there’s been a steadily increasing list of questions for the 22-year-old wanting to know everything from who she’s dating (fellow Russian tennis player Igor Andreev), to what’s on her iPod (many different songs), to who would she like to play her in a movie (Keira Knightley).

Another good indicator is to find out what fans are viewing on the official tournament website, australianopen.com. And, no surprises here, Kirilenko’s pictures have been viewed tens of thousands of times.

In 2009, she appeared in a Sports Illustrated spread titled ‘Volley of the Dolls’ with fellow racquet-bearers Daniela Hantuchova and Tatiana Golovin.

But no matter how many bikinis she’s snapped in on incredibly remote beaches that you and I will never visit, it’s her tennis that has pushed her name back into sports writers’ minds again.

And for that, we should all be thankful that this tennis fad has made a comeback.