Indian youngster Priyanshu Rajawat achieved his career-high ranking of 28 in the latest BWF world rankings on Tuesday.
Rajawat who earlier won the Orleans Masters qualified for the Australian Open semifinals and gave a tough fight to compatriot HS Prannoy. Although the young shuttler lost the match, he earned a lot of plaudits and that was reflected in the world rankings as well.
He lost to HS Prannoy 18-21, 12-21 to crash out of the semifinals of the Australian Open. On his journey to the semifinals, he defeated another Indian and former World No.1 Srikanth Kidambi.
The 21-year-old shuttler has shown sensational improvement in the last few months. He started the year at a ranking of 58 and now has jumped 30 places. He moved to 38 after winning the Orleans Masters and then gradually kept improving and therefore he was well rewarded.
Rajawat will look to take more heart from these performances and will continue to work harder to improve his game.
HS Prannoy remained India’s highest-ranked singles shuttler as he is still world number 9 while Lakshya Sen has shown good character to turn around this season and is still stationed at World number 11.
Srikanth Kidambi has fallen a place to be ranked 20th in the world after his defeat to lower-ranked Rajawat in the Australian Open.
In women’s singles, double Olympic medallist PV Sindhu has returned to the top 15 rankings. She had an easy draw in the Australian Open and she made full use of it. Sindhu lost to Beiwen Zhang in the quarterfinals, who went on to win the title. So that helped her and allowed her to jump two places to get back in the reckoning.
In men’s doubles, the star Indian duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty remain as the World Number 2 and are eager to perform at the upcoming World Championship. They will start the tournament as the second seed.
The women’s doubles duo of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand dropped two places to be World Number 19 after their three consecutive second-round exits. The duo are looking for answers after their third second-round exit at the Australian Open.
Indian shuttlers will be in action at the upcoming World Championships starting August 21 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
