Sreeja Akula continues to be top-ranked female table tennis player; Manika Batra moves up four spots in latest ITTF ranking

Hyderabad: India’s Sreeja Akula remained the top-ranked female singles table tennis player in the latest international table tennis rankings that were announced by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) on Tuesday.

Sreeja Akula is ranked 25th in the world followed by Manika Batra, who is ranked 26th in the world. Just 10 points separate the two Indian female paddlers.

In the men’s singles category, Achanta Sharath Kamal is the top-ranked male paddler at World No. 40. Along with Sharath Kamal, Manav Thakkar at World No. 62, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran at World No. 73 and Harmeet Desai, ranked 90 in the world, are the Indian male table tennis players in the top-100 in the world.

In the women’s singles, Yashaswini Ghorpade (ranked 88th in the world), Ayhika Mukherjee (ranked 89th) and Sutirtha Mukherjee (ranked 90th) moved down one spot each but are the three female paddlers, apart from Manika and Sreeja, in the top-100 in the world.

The 29-year-old Manika Batra moved up four spots after her splendid run in the WTT Champions event in Montpellier. She finished in the quarterfinals in Montpellier to gather more points, helping her move up the rankings.

Manika beat USA’s Lily Zhang in the first round before upsetting World No. 14 Bernadette Szocs in the pre-quarterfinals.

In the process, Manika Batra became the first Indian woman to reach the last-eight stage at the WTT Champions event. The Indian, however, lost to China’s Qian Tianyi in the quarterfinals.

Meanwhile, Sreeja Akula, who went down to World No. 13 Adriana Diaz of Puerto Rico in the first round, failed to accumulate valuable points and is now just 10 points adrift to Manika Batra as the top-ranked female Indian singles player.