While Sreeja moved up a spot, Manika Batra, who has been country ‘s top-ranked player in the women’s singles category for the last six years slipped two place is now placed 39th in the ranking.
Sreeja Akula in action (IANS)
Sreeja Akula on Tuesday beceme the top-ranked Indian women’s singles table tennis player after moving up one spot to a career-best world No. 38 in per the latest World Rankings releases by the ITTF
While Sreeja moved up a spot, Manika Batra, who has been country ‘s top-ranked player in the women’s singles category for the last six years slipped two place is now placed 39th in the ranking.
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The 25-year-old Sreeja has enjoyed a strong start to the 2024 season. She won her maiden international tournament at the WTT Feeder Corpus Christi 2024 in Texas in January, defeating Lily Zhang of the USA 3-0 (11-6, 18-17, 11-5) in the final.
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She also clinched the WTT Feeder Beirut II singles title after beating Luxembourg’s Sarah D Nutte 3-1 (6-11, 12-10, 11-5, 11-9) in the final.
She pulled off an impressive victory over then-world No. 2 Wang Yidi of of China in straight games (11-7, 11-9-13-11) in the group stage of the World Team Table Tennis Championships in Busan in February.
Sreeja is also a two-time national champion and won the Commonwealth Games gold medal in mixed doubles along with Sharath Kamal in 2022.
More recently, She was knocked out in the group stage of the ITTF World Cup 2024 in Macao, China after losing 3-1 (11-4, 11-4, 13-15, 11-2) to reigning Olympic champion and world No. 4 Chen Meng.
Manika, on the other hand, hasn’t played a lot of feeder tournaments recently, resulting in a loss of ranking points. She has 526 ranking points compared to Sreeja’s 529.
Both Sreeja and Manika will be in action at the Saudi Smash 2024, which will be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia from May 1.
Besides Sreeja and Manika, Yashaswini Ghorpade (world No. 99) and Archana Kamath (world No. 100) are the other Indians in the top 100 of the women’s singles rankings.
Olympian Sutirtha Mukherjee and Ayhika Mukherjee both fell two spots each to be ranked 122nd and 137th respectively.
In the men’s singles, Sharath Kamal is still the best-ranked Indian at world No. 37. Sathiyan Gnanasekaran jumped a spot to 60th, displacing Manav Thakkar, who fell to world No. 61. Harmeet Desai also fell a spot and is now ranked 64th.
Manav Thakkar and Manush Shah are ranked 12th in men’s doubles, ahead of the veteran pair of G Sathiyan and Sharath Kamal, who are 59th.
Sutirtha and Ayhika Mukherjee are world No. 14 in the women’s doubles rankings. Sreeja Akula and Diya Chitale occupy the 28th spot while Manika Batra and Archana Kamath are ranked 50th in the world.
In the mixed doubles rankings, Sathiyan and Manika fell one spot to world No. 19. Thakkar and Kamath stayed at world No. 33 while Chitale and Shah have also held on to their world No. 38 .
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