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The India No. 1 Kidambi Srikanth slipped to fourth in the new world rankings released by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) on Thursday, May 17, 2018. Srikanth has not been in action since bowing out in the quarter-finals of the Badminton Asia Championships at Wuhan in April.
The 25-year-old will not be playing at the Thomas Cup, where India will be led by the Asian Championships bronze medallist HS Prannoy. The latter remains firm at the ninth position while Sai Praneeth has dropped one place to 18th in the latest rankings.
Sameer Verma rises four spots
Swiss Open champion Sameer Verma is now close to breaking back into the top 20 after a good run in New Zealand and Australia. The 23-year-old has surged four spots to 21st after making it to the quarter-finals in Sydney last week.
With this, the Pullela Gopichand protégé is now just three places away from his career-best ranking of 18th that he had achieved last year.
Parupalli Kashyap has slid to 41st, Sourabh Verma is 65th and Subhankar Dey is 67th. Both Lakshya Sen and Ajay Jayaram have had a rise in this week’s rankings. While the young Sen is now 88th, Jayaram is 99th.
Jakka becomes India No. 3 in women’s singles
In women’s singles, there has been no change for the top two shuttle queens. PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal still continue to be third and 10th respectively.
There was, however, a big change after that. The 16-year-old Vaishnavi Reddy Jakka jumped seven rungs to a career-high 56th that has now made her the India No. 3 in women’s singles. The rise was possible after she won a round at last week’s Australian Open.
Ruthvika Shivani Gadde plummeted nine spots to 63rd with Sri Krishna Priya Kudaravalli right behind her at 64th.
Attri and Reddy jump to 22nd
The semi-final appearance at the Australian Open has hauled the Indian national men’s doubles champions Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy to 22nd. They are now just five places shy of matching their career-best ranking of 17th.
The former India No. 1 pair were the best performing Indians in Sydney. They are now four places behind the current India No. 1 team of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, who are at 18th.
The next best pair of Arjun MR and Shlok Ramchandran too climbed up five rungs to 38th.
In women’s doubles, Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy have nosedived to 27th. Reddy had better fortunes in mixed doubles, where she has moved up a couple of spots to 22nd alongside Pranaav Jerry Chopra.
Ponnappa and Rankireddy, the Indian national mixed doubles champions, have descended to 61st in this week’s rankings.
