Sen breaks into world’s top 10; Treesa-Gayatri reach career-best ranking in doubles

Indian badmiton star Lakshya Sen’s silver medal winning feat at the All England Badminton Championships helped him break into the top 10 of the latest BWF World Ranking on Tuesday. The 20-year-old from Uttarakhand, who became only the fifth Indian ever to reach the summit clash of All England Championships, improved two places to become world number 9 with 74,786 points, surpassing reigning world champion Loh Kean Yew of Singapore.

Sen had suffered a heartbreaking straight-game loss to Olympic champion and world No. 1 Viktor Axelsen of Denmark on Sunday.

The former world junior number one Indian thus became the country’s highest ranked men’s singles player, surpassing Kidambi Srikanth, who slipped to the 12th spot this week.

Sen has withdrawn from the ongoing Swiss Open due to exhaustion after making the final of the German Open and All England in the last two weeks.

Women’s doubles pair of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand also jumped 12 places to reach a career-best world number 34, riding on their maiden semifinal finish at the All England Championship.

The duo, who were promoted to the main draw from the reserve list at Birmingham, had stunned second seeded Koreans Lee Sohee and Shin Seungchan in the quarterfinals.

Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Ashwini Ponnappa and N Sikki Reddy remained India’s best ranked women’s doubles pair at world number 20, despite losing a place.

Double Olympic medallist P V Sindhu remained at world number 7, while Saina climbed two places to 23rd, following a second round defeat at All England.

Commonwealth Games silver medallists Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, who had claimed the men’s doubles title at India Open in January, jumped a place to the seventh spot.