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India’s badminton icon Saina Nehwal continues to occupy the world number three position in the latest World Badminton Federation rankings following her title win at the Denmark Open and runner-up finish at the French Open.
However, India’s top ranked men’s singles shuttler Parupalli Kashyap dropped a place to 23rd. Kashyap, who grabbed the eyeballs when he became the first Indian player to reach the men’s singles quarterfinals at the 2012 London Olympics, had lost in the first round to seventh seed Taufik Hidayat of Indonesia at the 2012 Yonex Japan Open.
The 26-year-old Hyderabad lad had reached a career-high ranking of 19 last August following his exploits at the London Olympics.
Even PV Sindhu – the country’s second highest ranked singles player after Saina – fell one spot to 25th. Sindhu had broken into the top-20 last September following her upset win over Olympic gold medallist Li Xuerui of China in the quarterfinals of the China Masters.
Ajay Jayaram – the country’s second highest ranked singles player – also dropped a slot to 27th. The Indian Oil employee had shocked third seed Kenichi Tago of Japan en route to a semifinal finish at the China Masters last September.
Most of the other Indian shuttlers slipped in rankings. Sourabh Varma slipped two places to 32nd while RMV Gurusaidutt fell two places to 45th.
Anand Pawar moved up one spot to 61st while Arvind Bhat continues to hold the 79 ranking.
Anup Sridhar climbed up two spots to be placed 134 following his conquest of France’s Bruce Leverdez in the second round of the Bitburger Open.
Chetan Anand – who was at one point of time the top ranked singles player of the country – plummeted further to 165th position from his previous week ranking of 133.
