India’s Manika Batra back in top 50 of world table tennis rankings
Sathiyan Gnanasekaran also climbed up five places to 33rd in the ITTF rankings and is the top-ranked Indian player in men’s singles.
Commonwealth Games gold medallist Manika Batra jumped six places to enter the top-50 of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) women’s singles world rankings for the first time since March 2019.
Manika Batra, who became the first Indian women’s singles player to make the round of 32 of Olympics at Tokyo 2020 last year, is ranked 50th in the latest table tennis rankings.
The Indian table tennis player, whose career-best world ranking is 46, also made it to the semi-finals of World Table Tennis (WTT) Contender tournaments in Budapest and Lasko to gather 280 ranking points.
Manika Batra, 25, currently has 1334 ranking points, seven behind world No. 49 Polina Mikhailova. Sun Yingsha of China leads the women’s singles rankings with 7580 points.
The two-time Olympian also moved up in women’s and mixed doubles rankings.
While the Manika Batra-Archana Kamath pair attained their best-ever world ranking of sixth in women's doubles after climbing up four places, Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran also moved up four spots to be ranked 11th in the mixed doubles world rankings.
Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran had created history last year by becoming the first Indian pair to win a WTT title in Budapest. They later became the first-ever Indian mixed doubles pair to break into the top-15 of world rankings.
In the men's singles rankings, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran moved to the 33rd position from 38th. Sharath Kamal, meanwhile, slipped two places to the 34th spot.
In men’s doubles, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran and Harmeet Desai are the top-ranked Indian team in the world at 29th position.