Indian doubles badminton pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty broke into the top 20 of the badminton world rankings for the first time in their career on Thursday. The pair rose one spot in the latest Badminton World Federation rankings released on Thursday after giving second seeds Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen a tough fight in the pre-quarterfinals of the All England Open.
Satwik and Chirag lost 16-21, 21-16, 21-23 against the world No 2 pair after battling for over an hour. They would have even beaten the Danes if not for some controversial service fault calls. Satwik and Chirag had even reached the semi-finals of the Indonesia Masters earlier this year before losing to the world No 1 pair Marcus Fernaldi Gideon and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo. Last season, the Indian pair had reached the quarter-finals of a Superseries for the first time.
HS Prannoy climbed four spots to 12th following his run to the quarter-finals of the All England Open. He was the only men’s singles player from India to reach the quarters at the All England this year as both Kidambi Srikanth and B Sai Praneeth crashed out early.
Meanwhile, Srikanth failed to clinch the top spot after bowing out in the second round in Birmingham. The result sees him in second place, 235 points adrift of the top-ranked Viktor Axelsen. Sai Praneeth fell three places to 15th as Sameer Verma and Parupalli Kashyap occupied the 37th and 42nd respectively.
Despite reaching the semi-finals of the All England Open for the first time in her career, PV Sindhu continued to remain third in the women’s singles rankings, while Saina Nehwal, who lost in the first round of the All England to world No 1 Tai Tzu Ying, maintained 12th spot ranking.
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