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Singapore Open Superseries winner B Sai Praneeth rose one spot to 15th in the latest world rankings released by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) on Thursday, November 9, 2017. He is now one place away from matching his career-best ranking of 14th that he achieved in June.
Sai has been struggling of late and has not progressed past the second round in the last four Superseries tournaments. At the recently-concluded National Championships too, he suffered a shock three-game defeat at the hands of the lower-ranked Subhankar Dey in the quarter-finals.
Meanwhile, two-time national champion Sourabh Verma plunged 16 places to 57th in the latest rankings. Verma has been having a torrid time, having failed to participate at the Nationals following his inability to recover from an ankle injury on time.
Verma, whose career-best ranking has been 30th, sustained the injury while training in Hyderabad after the Japan Open Superseries in September. His younger brother, Sameer Verma too slid two rungs to 20th. Sameer too is recuperating from a shoulder injury and could not play at the Denmark Open and the French Open.
The top two shuttlers -- Srikanth Kidambi and HS Prannoy -- remained unchanged at 2nd and 11th respectively. Ajay Jayaram, who has pulled out of the China Open and the Hong Kong Open, too is static at 22nd while Commonwealth Games champion Parupalli Kashyap has climbed up to 44th. Nationals bronze medallist Subhankar Dey is currently 69th, having dropped a couple of spots.
Also read: Sameer Verma, Sourabh Verma and Harsheel Dani pull out of Senior National Championships
Saina, Sindhu unchanged
National champion Saina Nehwal and the Nationals runner-up PV Sindhu too had no change in their rankings this week. Sindhu holds on to the second spot and Saina continues to be 11th.
2016 national champion Rituparna Das slipped to 51st. South Asian Games winner Ruthvika Shivani Gadde, who grabbed a bronze at the Nationals, dropped 18 places to 101st.
Also read: Saina Nehwal credits Pullela Gopichand for victory over PV Sindhu at Senior National Championships
Career-high ranking for Rankireddy and Shetty
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty squandered six match points to lose the Nationals men’s doubles final to the India No. 2 pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy. But they have a reason to smile as they have now risen even higher in the world rankings and are presently at a career-high 27th.
Attri and Reddy are six places behind at 33rd. Arjun MR and Shlok Ramchandran continue to be the India No. 3 and are at 37th, rounding off the top 40.
National women’s doubles champion Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy maintain their 25th ranking. The India No. 1 mixed doubles pair of Reddy and Pranaav Jerry Chopra too remains static at 16th.
