Satwik-Ashwini jumped 16 places and made a spot in top 20 in the BWF rankings.They rank world number 19 which is so far the best rank of their career.
Indian mixed doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa made it to the world's top 20 latest Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings on Tuesday. Owing to their stunning performance at the recently concluded Asia leg, they jumped 16 places and reached world number 19, the best rank of their career so far.
The Indian duo was the first Indian mixed doubles pair to reach the semifinals of the Super 1000 event at the Thailand Open. They had emerged victorious against the fifth seeded Malaysian duo Chan Peng Soon and Goh Liu Ying in the quarterfinals. Meanwhile, Indian shuttler P V Sindhu remained at world number 7 and Saina Nehwal improved a place to world number 19. In the men's singles, Kidambi Srikanth jumped a spot and ranked 13th while Sameer Verma moved four places to 27th spot.
B Sai Praneeth slipped a spot to 17th owing to his defeat in the very first round of the first event. He had tested positive for COVID-19 and had to withdraw from the second tournament. Parupalli Kashyap too slipped two spots to 26th after he suffered a calf muscle injury.
In the men's doubles, Satwik and Chirag Shetty retained their rank of world number 10 as they had reached the semifinals in the Thailand Open. M R Arjun and Dhruv Kapila zoomed 33 places to 64th, who started playing together in 2019. The HSBC World Tour Finals ended on Sunday after which the BWF World Rankings were reopened. Last year, in March, the BWF had frozen the world rankings in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic.
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