Having failed to defend her women’s singles title at last week’s Swiss Open, double Olympic medallist P V Sindhu dropped out of the world’s top 10 in the latest BWF rankings issued on Tuesday. The 27-year-old from Hyderabad, who has been struggling this season since returning to action following a long injury lay-off, slipped two places to the 11th spot with 60,448 points.
A former world champion, Sindhu, who has a career-best ranking of world number 2, has been in the top 10 since November, 2016. She first cracked the elite top 10 in August, 2013. In men’s singles, HS Prannoy was static at world number 8, while Kidambi Srikanth dropped a rung to 21st place and Lakshya Sen was 25th. Swiss Open champion Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty strengthened their world number six position, while women’s doubles pairing of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand was static at the 18th position.
Meanwhile, newly-crowned Swiss Open doubles champion Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will look to continue their consistent run, while singles stars such as PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth will hope to regain form at the Madrid Spain Masters which gets underway in Madrid on Tuesday. Satwik and Chirag notched up the first title for India this season when they defeated China’s world No. 21 Ren Xiang Yu and Tan Qiang 21-19 24-22 in the summit clash of Swiss Open in Basel on Sunday.
The world number 6 Indian pair, the 2022 world championships bronze medallists, will eye another super 300 title when they begin their campaign against Japan’s Ayato Endo and Yuta Takei this week. While Satwik and Chirag made a mark in Basel last week, the singles stars cut a sorry figure with Sindhu still struggling to find her feet since returning from a long injury layoff and Srikanth unable to find any consistency. Second seed Sindhu, who has not been able to cross the second round in the last few tournaments in 2023, will begin her campaign against a qualifier and hope to go deep into the draw.
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