Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Ashwini Ponnappa pair breaks into top 20 in BWF Rankings

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Ashwini Ponnappa pair breaks into top 20 in BWF Rankings

Ashwini Ponnappa and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy

Ashwini Satwik Thailand OPen
Ashwini and Satwik

India’s mixed doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Ashwini Ponnappa broke in the top 20 of the latest Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings after their terrific performances at the Asia leg which came to an end recently. The pair reached the semifinals of the Toyota Thailand Open recently and in the process became the first Indian mixed doubles pair to reach the semifinals in a world tour Super 1000 event.

The pair shocked Malaysians Chan Peng Soon and Goh Liu Ying who were seeded fifth in the quarterfinals of the event. Satwik who is also ranked 10th in the rankings for men’s doubles along with his partner Chirag Shetty retained the spot after the pair also reached the semifinals of the Toyota Thailand Open.

PV Sindhu retains 7th spot; Saina climbs to 19th

PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal

In the other rankings, India’s world champion and Olympic silver medalist PV Sindha retained her number 7 position while Olympic bronze medalist Saina Nehwal climbed one spot to reach 19th. In the men’s singles, Srikanth Kidambi climbed one spot as well to reach 13th while Sameer Verma jumped from 31st to reach 27th after his solid performances at the Toyota Thailand Open where he was a quarter-finalist.

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B Sai Praneeth lost in the first round of the first tournament and was forced to withdraw from the second after testing positive for COVID-19 dropped from 16th to 17th while Parupalli Kashyap who is currently down with a calf injury dropped from 24th to 26th. The biggest climbers for India were MR Arjun and Dhruv Kapila in the men’s doubles section who climbed 33 positions to reach 64th.

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