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The latest world rankings released by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) on Thursday, August 9, 2018 did not prove to be favourable for India’s top shuttlers. Both Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth could not emulate their own results achieved at the 2017 World Championships, where they had reached the semi-finals and the quarter-finals respectively.
This time they suffered early defeats at Nanjing. Nehwal crashed out to eventual champion Carolina Marin in the quarter-finals while Srikanth was shocked by eventual bronze medallist Daren Liew in the third round.
That resulted in both Nehwal and Srikanth slipping in the latest world ranking chart. Nehwal exchanged places with Japan’s Sayaka Takahashi to move down to 11th. Srikanth plunged a couple of spots to eighth, his lowest ranking in 10 months.
Srikanth was last ranked eighth on October 19 of last year. His performance at the World Championships left a lot to be desired and is a cause of concern ahead of the upcoming Asian Games.
PV Sindhu was able to defend her runner-up points from last year. So, the 23-year-old did not see any change to her ranking and continues to remain the highest-ranked Indian at the third position.
While HS Prannoy maintains his 11th ranking, Sameer Verma dropped to 21st and Sai Praneeth rose to 24th.
Outside the top 50, Parupalli Kashyap is 51st, Sourabh Verma is 55th, Subhankar Dey is 61st and Lakshya Sen is 78th. Ajay Jayaram had a massive fall of 22 spots as his 2017 World Championships points came off, pushing him down to 93rd. RMV Gurusaidutt jumped four spots to 97th.
In women’s singles, Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka broke back into the top 50 at 50th. Sri Krishna Priya Kudaravalli is 72nd, Ruthvika Shivani Gadde is 80th, Mugdha Agrey is 84th and Rituparna Das is 134th.
Ponnappa and Rankireddy break into top 30
In men’s doubles, the pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty rose a couple of spots to 23rd after winning a round at the World Championships. National champions Manu Attri and B. Sumeeth Reddy are placed at 28th.
The women’s doubles pair of Ashwini Ponnappa and N. Sikki Reddy are 29th while in mixed doubles, Reddy dropped to 24th alongside Pranaav Jerry Chopra. The mixed doubles national champions, Ponnappa and Rankireddy surged 12 places to 28th after making it to the quarter-finals of the World Championships last week.
