Kuala Lumpur: Two-time Olympic medallist P.V Sindhu gained a place to enter the top 5 in the women’s singles BWF World Rankings released on Tuesday.
Commonwealth Games gold medallist Sindhu, who has 87,218 points from 26 tournaments, displaced arch-rival Carolina Marin of Spain in the fifth position. The Indian ace boasts a career-high ranking of world No.2, attained back in 2017-18, but ha’n’t broken into the top five since September 2019, just following her world championships title win that year.
Sindhu won the gold medal at the CWG 2022 earlier this year but has been out of action since then because of an ankle injury. She resumed her training on Monday after recovering from the injury and is expected to return to the court in December, in time for the season-ending BWF World Tour Finals 2022 in Guangzhou, China.
Meanwhile, London 2012 Olympic bronze medallist Saina Nehwal dropped down a place and is currently ranked 33rd in the world badminton rankings.
The veteran player, who to date is the only Indian women’s player to achieve the No.1 ranking, has struggled for form over the past couple of years.
In the men’s singles standings, Lakshya Sen retained his career-best eighth position attained earlier this month and continued as the best-ranked ‘ndian men’s singles player. Compatriot and former world No.1 Kidambi Srikanth also retained his 11th spot.
On the other hand, in-form H.S Prannoy, who recently became world No.1 in the BWF World Tour 2022 Rankings, continued his surge up the world rankings as well and is now placed 12th after gaining a spot.
Among the other Indian gainers in the list were the men’s doubles pair of MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila, which moved up two places to 19th and broke into the top 20 for the first time as a team.
The women’s doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand moved up four places to 27th and the mixed doubles pair Ishaan Bhatnagar and Tanisha Crasto reached 29th after gaining two spots — all achieved their new career-high ranks.
The young team of Treesa and Gayatri are now just three spots behind Ashwini Ponnappa and N. Sikki Reddy, India’s best-ranked women’s doubles team at 24th.
Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy rema’ned India’s top men’s doubles pair after retaining their eighth spot.
(IANS)
