Commonwealth Games mixed doubles champion Sreeja Akula on Tuesday became the top-ranked Indian woman table tennis player after rising to a career-high rank of 38 in the latest ITTF Chart, replacing Manika Batra.
Sreeja climbed a spot while Manika, who had been India’s No.1 TT player for a while now, slipped two places to 39 in the latest update.
The 25-year-old Sreeja has enjoyed a good run this year, winning the WTT Feeder Corpus Christi and WTT Feeder Beirut titles in January and March respectively besides reaching the quarter final of the WTT Star Contender in Goa.
Sreeja had won the mixed doubles gold medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games alongside veteran Sharath Kamal.
Yashaswini Ghorpade and Archana Kamath held on to their 99th and 100th spot in the rankings.
Sharath continues as the top-ranked male player, occupying the 37th spot in the rankings while G. Sathiyan and Manav Thakar have interchanged places to be 60th and 61st respectively.
National champion Harmeet Desai, who was the top-ranked Indian a couple of months ago, dropped to the 64th spot. India have already qualified for the team events at the Paris Olympics.
Two singles entries in men’s and women’s singles will be decided by the Table Tennis Federation of India by May 16 after considering the world rankings at the time.
