Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty continue their stunning rise in world badminton as the duo achieved its career-best BWF rankings of World No. 7 in men’s doubles on Tuesday.
Satwik and Chirag, who have been in fine form on the tour, rose 2 spots from World No. 9 after their run to the semi-final at Fuzhou China Open 2019 last week.
Satwik and Chirag have become the 1st Indian men’s doubles pair to be ranked inside the top 10 of BWF charts. They are only the third Indian pair after Jwala Gutta-Valiyaveetil Diju and Gutta-Ashwini Ponnappa to be ranked inside the top 10.
2019 has seen Satwik and Chirag grow into one of the leading men’s doubles pairing on the circuit.
The young Indian pair won its first Super 500 tournament in Thailand Open earlier this year. Satwik and Chirag defeated former world champions Li Jun Hui and Liu Yu Chen of China to script history.
Satwik and Chirag also reached the final at French Open Super 750 wherein they had beaten the likes of World No. 6 Hiroyuki Endo and Yuta Watanabe of Japan and World No. 2 pairing of Hendra Setiawan and Mohammad Ahsan.
At Fuzhou China Open, Satwik and Chirag defeated Hiroyuki Endo and Yuta Watanabe in the second round after which they stunned Li and Liu in straight sets to reach their 2nd Super 750 semi-final of the year.
Meanwhile, World Championships bronze medallist Sai Praneeth broke into the top 10 of men’s singles for the 1st time in his career. Sai rose a spot to be ranked No. 10, according to the recently updated BWF rankings.
Sai Praneeth has become only the 7th Indian shuttler after Prakash Padukone, Pullela Gopichand, Chetan Anand, Parupalli Kashyap, Srikanth Kidambi and HS Prannoy to be ranked in the top 10 of men’s singles rankings.
Both Sai Praneeth and Satwik-Chirag pair will be in action at Hong Kong Open Super 500 tournament, starting Tuesday.
WhatsApp us