Saina Nehwal drops four places in BWF rankings, PV Sindhu maintains 10th spot

New Delhi: India’s Saina Nehwal on Thursday dropped four places to be ninth, while compatriot PV Sindhu remained in the 10th spot in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings despite getting a silver in the women’s singles competition at the recently-concluded Olympics. In another bad news for Indian badminton, the women’s doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa dropped four places to the 26th spot following their failure to reach the knock-out stage in the Rio Games. [caption id=“attachment_2967658” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File photo of Saina Nehwal. AP[/caption] However, men’s singles shuttler Kidambi Srikanth, who reached the Olympics quarter-finals, jumped a place to be 10th, while Ajay Jayaram improved his 22nd rank by a position. Saina, the 2012 London Games bronze medallist, failed to come out of the group stage competition at the Rio Games. And her poor performance led her to move down four places to be ninth as the Rio bronze medallist Nozomi Okuhara of Japan and Shixian Wang of China moved up three places each to be third and sixth respectively. Rio semi-finalist Li Xuerui moved up a place to be second, while her compatriot Yihan Wang, who lost to Sindhu in the quarter-finals, dropped two places to be fourth. Former world champion Ratchanok Intanon of Thailand moved down a place to be fifth and Tai Tzy Ying of Chinese Taipei gained a place to be seventh. Sung ji Hyun of South Korea lost her seventh spot by a position. In the men’s singles, Srikanth, who took legendary Lin Dan to the task in the quarter-finals, moved into the 10th spot following his impressive show at Rio. Malaysian Lee Chong Wei, who finished runner-up at Rio to Chen Long, kept his place at the top-ranked shuttler, while Dan was also stagnant at No 3. In the men’s doubles, the pair of Manu Attri and B Sumeeth Reddy were stagnant in the 21st spot.