Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy on Friday created a new record for being Men’s badminton doubles pair for 10 weeks now.
No other Indian badminton player has spent more time atop the BWF Rankings than the ‘Brothers of Destruction.’
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London 2012 Olympic bronze medallist Saina Nehwal held the previous record for the most weeks as world No. 1 for an Indian badminton player. She climbed up to the No. 1 rank in the badminton rankings on August 18, 2015, and remained there till October 21, 2015, for nine weeks.
Chirag-Satwik, the Asian Games champions, rose to the top spot in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) world rankings on January 23 this year after reaching finals in the China Masters, Malaysia Open and India Open.
The Indian duo further consolidated their position by winning the French Open in March.
The badminton rankings system takes into account the 10 highest-scoring events by a player/pair in the preceding 52 weeks.
Currently, Chirag and Satwik have 1,02,303 points on the leaderboard. They are over 5,000 points clear of the second-placed Kang Min Hyuk and Seo Seung Jae from the Republic of Korea.
In October last year, Chirag-Satwik became the first Indian doubles pair in history to take the world No. 1 spot after winning the gold medal at the Asian Games.
However, they stayed at the pole position for just three weeks before dropping down.
In men’s singles, Kidambi Srikanth reached the summit of the rankings in April 2018 but his stay at the perch lasted for only one week.
Legendary Prakash Padukone, who became the first Indian to win the All England Open title in 1980, was regarded as the world No. 1 back at the time but the computerised ranking point systems were only introduced in badminton much later.
