Maria Sharapova decided not to play in Birmingham this year, even though she signed a two-year deal to appear when the LTA gave her a wildcard for last year’s tournament. She needed the practice back then, when she was just making her comeback from a 15-month ban for using meldonium.

Twelve months later she decided she could do without it. Instead, she chose to play a couple of exhibition games at the Aspall Tennis Classic at the Hurlingham Club, a corporate jolly run by her management group IMG. On Tuesday she lost the first of them, against Maria Sakkari, 7-5, 6-4.

“It’s pretty much the only preparation I’ll have,” Sharapova said courtside. “I decided not to play an event before Wimbledon this year as I had a pretty long clay‑court season with four tournaments. So just for the longevity and kind of being mindful of a long career, you make those decisions.”

The LTA took a lot of stick when it gave her that wildcard in 2017, after she had been denied one for the French Open. The former LTA chief executive Michael Downey defended the decision by saying it had been done to “benefit British fans who can take in her matches on home soil”.

Well, the Hurlingham members got to see her anyway. Around a hundred or so turned up to watch, despite the competing attractions scheduled at the club that same afternoon, an embroidery class and a mahjong tournament. Unfortunately for everyone else, the club’s waiting list is closed. Not to worry. There were also hospitality tickets, available for a mere £315 plus VAT, so long as you booked a table of 12. That includes a canapés reception “attended by the tennis stars”. Skimming through the order of play, it seems the stars are more likely to come from Mansour Bahrami’s end of the draw than Sharapova’s.

The press had been warned that Sharapova would not linger. “It’s extremely unlikely Maria will be talking”, we were told, “unless there’s a major change of mood”. There wasn’t.

This was Sharapova’s first match since she was defeated 6-2, 6-1 by Garbiñe Muguruza in the quarter‑finals at Roland Garros, and she looked rusty. She was supposed to be playing the 21-year-old Russian Natalia Vikhlyantseva, who has said that she idolised Sharapova as a child. Instead Sharapova’s team invited Sakkari of Greece up to play at short notice, after she lost to Svetlana Kuznetsova in the first round at Eastbourne.

Once Sakkari settled into the match, she made pretty short work of it. She did not win a point in either of Sharapova’s first two service games, but had two break points in her third, and took the second of them with a fine forehand winner.

Sharapova broke back, but lost the first set when she was broken again. The second set was even more straightforward for Sakkari, who broke twice. Sharapova made a lot of uncharacteristic errors, back‑to‑back double faults, smashes that found the net and missed drop shots.

Next week, Sharapova will be back at Wimbledon for the first time since 2015, before her suspension. “No words can really explain what it means to walk out on to one of those courts at Wimbledon as an athlete,” she said afterwards. “It’s always incredibly special coming back to a place where you feel like you are a very small part of its history. I cherish that [2004] victory very much, but obviously when you get on the court you treat it as if you’ve never won it before so you have that extra motivation.”

On this evidence Sharapova should not find that last part too hard, since she looked a long way short of winning form here.