Satwik Chirag lose No.1 ranking, slip to third in latest BWF list

New Delhi: Premier Indian doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, who pulled out of their title defence at Indonesia Open last week, slipped two rungs to third in the latest Badminton World Federation rankings on Tuesday.

China’s Liang Wei Keng and Wang Chang are the new men’s doubles No.1s followed by Denmark’s Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen, who jumped two places.

The Chirag-Satwik pair won the Thailand Open in May to reclaim the No.1 ranking but suffered loss of form and made a first-round exit from the Singapore Open last month.

The Indians have also pulled out of the ongoing Australian Open.

In men’s singles, HS Prannoy and Lakshya Sen remained inside top-15, maintaining their 10th and 14th positions respectively.

Kidambi Srikanth dropped four places to be No 32, while Priyanshu Rajawat (No 34) and Kiran George (No 35, up by one place) were the next best Indians.

Two-time Olympic medallist PV Sindhu remained static at No 10 in the women’s singles rankings.

In women’s doubles, Paris Olympics-bound pair Tanisha Crasto and Ashwini Ponnappa improved one place to 19th.

Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand also climbed one notch to 24th.

The Commonwealth Games bronze-medallist pair had made a last-16 exit from the Indonesia Open.