In-depth: What did Maria Sharapova do wrong? Can appeal succeed? And is this the end of her career?

Just last month Shamil Tarpishchev, head of Russian tennis, told a the R-Sport news agency that Sharapova's situation was "bad" and that it was "very doubtful" that she would resume her career.

On Wednesday, with her two-year ban confirmed, that prognosis seems likely to be very accurate: Sharapova will be three months shy of her 31st birthday when her ban is lifted in January 2018.

[REPORT: Sharapova hit with two-year ban for failed drugs test]

Sharapova took Meldonium, also known as mildronate. It is a drug used to treat chest pain and heart attacks among other conditions, and dilates blood vessels and increases blood flow.

It is those latter abilities which earned it a spot on the WADA banned list: researchers have linked it to increased athletic performance and endurance, and quicker recovery.

The decision to ban it was taken in September 2009, with WAFDA citing "evidence of its use by athletes with the intention of enhancing performance".

Sharapova claims that she has a family history of diabetes, and was taking the substance as part of her medication to combat it for almost a decade.

The makers of the drug undermined that claim somewhat, however, publicly stating that it is intended for use over a period of a few weeks rather than many years.

The maximum ban for her offence would have been four years, the minimum one year under ITF guidelines.

And the Russian has already issued a statement saying that she will appeal, no doubt hoping to get the CAS to cut her ban to one year due to the fact that the ITF tribunal accepted her claim that she had only accidentally carried on taking the drug, having not been aware of the new ban.

However, in its full report the ITF revealed that Sharapova had stopped seeing the doctor who initially prescribed the drug, and that she hadn't told her new medical team that she was still taking it. She claims that she was never asked - a claim that the ITF says is "hard to credit", since standard medical practice insists on doctors asking what medication any new patient is taking.

Then there is the smoking gun in the ITF's findings, in paragraph 63 of the report: "That leaves the issue as to why Ms Sharapova was systematically using Mildronate before matches, and in particular at the Australian Open in 2016.

"In the tribunal’s view the answer is clear. Whatever the position may have been in 2006, there was in 2016 no diagnosis and no therapeutic advice supporting the continuing use of Mildronate...

"The manner of its use, on match days and when undertaking intensive training, is only consistent with an intention to boost her energy levels.

"It may be that she genuinely believed that Mildronate had some general beneficial effect on her health, but the manner in which the medication was taken, its concealment from the anti-doping authorities, her failure to disclose it even to her own team, and the lack of any medical justification must inevitably lead to the conclusion that she took Mildronate for the purpose of enhancing her performance."

While the likes of Serena Williams and Flavia Pennetta have won Grand Slams in their 30s, they are very much the exception rather than the rule. It's over two years since the Russian won the last of her Slams - at Roland Garros in 2014 - and while she made the final at the Australian Open in 2015, she has not looked a likely winner since then.

In two more years, with the likes of Garbine Muguruza now coming through into the game, it seems highly unlikely that she would have any chance of getting back to the top of the sport.

Highly unlikely, but not impossible: there is precedent for players leaving the sport and getting back to the elite level. In 2007, for example, Belgium's Kim Clijsters retired; two years later she returned to the sport, and within a few months won the US Open for a second time in her career - beating Serena Williams en-route to the final - and went on to defend the title a year later, before also claiming the 2011 Australian Open title.

Clijsters was still in her late 20s at the time, however; as was Justine Henin, who made the Australian Open final in 2010 after two years out of the sport.

Will she try to return? Absolutely. As the top-earning female sports star on the planet - prior to her run-in with sport's anti-doping police - she has everything to gain and nothing to lose by returning to competition.

Even if she does get back to the top of the sport, the ITF's key paragraph surely means that Sharapova's time as the darling of the tennis world - and its top-earning woman - is over. Let's look at it again:

"The manner of its use, on match days and when undertaking intensive training, is only consistent with an intention to boost her energy levels... She took Mildronate for the purpose of enhancing her performance."

The only way that conclusion could be worse is if she knowingly continued taking the medication while realising it was on the banned list.

Quite simply, though, that knowledge is immaterial: the ITF say she took a banned substance because she felt it helped her play better, and is now suffering the consequences.