Sreeja Akula moves past Manika Batra to become India’s no.1 Table Tennis player in women’s singles

CWG mixed doubles champion Sreeja Akula jumped to the 38th palce in the latest ITTF Table Tennis World Rankings in the women’s singles category on April 23. Sreeja has overtaken Manika Batra, who previously held the position. Meanwhile, Manika has slipped two places to 39th in the rankings. 

The 25-year-old Sreeja has had a successful year as she clinched titles at the WTT Feeder Corpus Christi and WTT Feeder Beirut tournaments in January and March respectively. She also reached the quarterfinals of the WTT Star Contender in Goa. Notably, Sreeja secured the mixed doubles gold medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games alongside veteran Sharath Kamal.

Both Indian players Sreeja and Manika are now gearing up for the upcoming Saudi Smash tournament, which will kick off on May 1 in Saudi Arabia. The tournament will offer a lot of ranking points hence they both will try to make full use of this top-tier tournament.

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In other rankings, Yashaswini Ghorpade and Archana Kamath maintained their positions at 99th and 100th respectively.

Sharath Kamal remains India’s top-ranked male player 

In the men's singles, Sharath Kamal remains India’s top-ranked male player as he holds the 37th spot in the rankings while G Sathiyan and Manav Thakar have swapped places to be 60th and 61st respectively.

On the other hand, the National champion Harmeet Desai, has experienced a decline as he dropped to the 64th spot. He was the top-ranked Indian a couple of months ago.

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Sreeja and Manika knocked out of the World Cup

Most recently, Sreeja and Manika failed to progress to the knockout stage at the ITTF World Cup in Macao, China on April 17.

Notably, India have already qualified for the team events at the Paris Olympics. The Table Tennis Federation of India will determine the two singles entries in the men's and women's categories by May 16 after considering the world rankings at that time.

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