Indian badminton stars shine: Prannoy at no.6, Sindhu at no.14

On a high after his maiden World Championship bronze medal, Indian shuttler H S Prannoy soared to career-high world ranking of No 6 in the latest BWF rankings published on Tuesday. The 31-year-old Kerala shuttler, who eliminated world Number 1 and Olympic champion Viktor Axelsen en route to his maiden World Championships bronze, rose three spots with 72437 points in his kitty. He is also the only Indian shuttler, who has maintained a top-10 rank since December last year. In this period, he has won the Super-500 Malaysia Masters and recently finished runner-up at the Australian Open. Among other Indians in the men’s singles, Lakshya Sen’s ranking dropped by one place, making him the world number 12, while Kidambi Srikanth maintained his position at 20th despite a making a first-round exit at the World Championships. In women’s singles, former world champion PV Sindhu, who also made an opening-round exit at the Worlds, moved one spot to secure 14th rank. In the men’s doubles, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty maintained their world number two ranking, although they lost in the quarterfinals of the World Championships going down to Kim Astrup-Anders Rasmussen. The women’s doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand advanced two places in the rankings, securing the 17th spot in the world rankings. This achievement follows their commendable performance in the round of 16 at the World Championships where they fought hard before going down to top seeded Chinese duo of Chen Qing Chen and Jia Yi Fan, the eventual gold medallists.