Hyderabad: Indian men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty have climbed to the seventh position in the newly updated BWF World Rankings. The pair have thus become the first Indian men's doubles pair and the third Indian doubles team to enter the top-10 in the world rankings.
The pair have been going through a purple patch in recent months, reaching the final of the French Open in October and the semi-final of the China Open in November. They beat several higher-ranked oppositions in this period, including World No 2 Indonesian pair Hendra Setiawan and Mohammad Ahsan and Japan's sixth-ranked Hiroyuki Endo and Yuta Watanabe.
Sai Praneeth, who had won bronze at the World Championships in August, moved up a spot to ninth, thus becoming the seventh Indian to enter the men's top 10 in the world rankings. Former World No.1 Kidambi Srikanth slid three places to 13th.
Both PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal remained sixth and ninth in the rankings.
Japan's Kento Momota remained top of the pile in the men's rankings while Chinese Taipei's Tai Tzu Ying returned to the top spot in the women's rankings, pushing Japan's Nozomi Okuhara to second place.
