While paddlers Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Sharath Kamal maintained their spots in the top 40 of the men’s singles table tennis world rankings, India had a new entrant in that group on Tuesday with Manika Batra moving up 10 places to No 38.

Manika Batra is already also in the top 10 of world’s mixed doubles and women’s doubles rankings along with Sathiyan and Archana Kamath respectively.

Batra’s move to No 38 makes it her career best singles ranking, reported PTI.

Here’s a look at the top-ranked players/pairs from India in different categories.

India's significant moves in latest WTT ranking

Category RANK PLAYER NATIONALITY POINTS
Men's singles 34    (Up 5)  Sathiyan GNANASEKARAN    India 530
Men's singles 37    (Up 1) Sharath Kamal ACHANTA    India 480
Women's singles 38    (Up 10)  Manika BATRA    India 540
Women's singles 66    (Up 26)  Archana Girish KAMATH    India 239
Men's doubles 29    (Up 7) Sathiyan GNANASEKARAN
Harmeet DESAI 		IndiaIndia 404
Women's doubles 4  - Manika BATRA
Archana Girish KAMATH 		IndiaIndia 1399
Mixed doubles 6    (Up 1) Sathiyan GNANASEKARAN
Manika BATRA 		IndiaIndia 1614
Courtesy: WTT

Overall, Sharath and Sathiyan are the only two male players in the top 100 for singles, while there are three more apart from Batra in women’s singles. Archana Kamath in No 66, moving up from 92. Recently crowned national champion Sreeja Akula is world no 68, having 39 spots from 107th position. Also in top 100 is Reeth Tennison, up to 97 by nearly 200 spots.

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Wahid Oshodi, the ITTF Executive Committee member, spoke about the changes coming into play for rankings.

After long and serious consideration, the WRWG decided to recommend the removal of the “initial points” for a variety of practical reasons. The abnormal situation brought upon the world by the Covid-19 pandemic prevented us from staging planned events, and the “initial points” allowed us to keep the World Rankings alive, but some of these “initial points” included points from events as far back as 2018. As the pandemic subsides, we have been able to stage more events around the world.

The general feeling among players, fans and ourselves was that the Rankings were not truly representative of the current standard of the players. Some players making rapid progress over the last year did not see their performances being accurately reflected in the Rankings. Therefore, it was time to remove these “initial points”. I believe a few other International Federations have taken similar steps as ours.

— via ITTF