India’s top men’s doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty jumped up two spots to achieve their best-ever career-high rank of World No. 1 in latest BWF World Rankings, released on Tuesday.
This is the first time that Satwik and Chirag have been ranked as No 1 team in the world and they currently have 92,411 ranking points. With this, Satwik and Chirag became the first Indian duo and fourth Indians after legendary Prakash Padukone, Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth to become World No 1.
The dynamic duo have achieved the historic feat after their gold medal finish at the recently concluded Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. The star pair of Satwik and Chirag had beaten Korea’s Choi Sol Gyu and Kim Won Ho 21-18, 21-16 in the final to clinch India’s first-ever badminton gold medal at the Asian Games and add to their incredible haul in 2023.
It was their fifth title of the year, following wins at the Swiss Open, Asia Championships, Indonesia Open and Korea Open.
Popularly known as “Sat-Chi”, Satwik and Chirag will be in action at the BWF Arctic Open 2023, starting today in Vantaa, Finland.
Meanwhile, HS Prannoy dropped one place in the men’s singles to World No 8 despite winning a bronze medal at the Asian Games. Lakshya Sen has also dropped one position to be at the No. 15 position while Kidambi Srikanth rises one spot and is 20th in the men’s singles category.
On the other hand, PV Sindhu, who crashed out in the quarter-finals at Asiad, has risen by two places to World No 13 as the highest-ranked women’s singles player from India. Former world No. 1 and London 2012 Olympics bronze medallist Saina Nehwal is at No. 54 position.
In the women’s doubles, India’s top-ranked pair of Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly jumped one position to take the 16th position while the duo of Rohan Kapoor-Sikki Reddy retained their world No. 38 position to be India’s top pair in mixed doubles.
