Table Tennis
TT Rankings: Sharath Kamal slips out of top 100
India's top-ranked paddlers Manika Batra and Harmeet Desai hold on, but other Indians, including Sharath Kamal, slide down the world rankings.
FILE PHOTO: Achanta Sharath Kamal lost the third match 2-3 against OH Junsung of South Korea.
Achanta Sharath Kamal fell 31 spots to slip out of the top 100 ITTF Table Tennis world rankings on Tuesday. The 41-year-old, who broke into the top-100 back in 2007, has been out of international action since going out of the WTT Zagreb Contender in June-July in the round of 16.
In what was a bad week for all Indian paddlers except top male and female paddlers Harmeet Desai and Manika Batra, there was a free fall in the world rankings in the second week of August.
Harmeet regained one spot to become 62nd in men's singles, but Manav Thakkar (101st) and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran (102nd) joined Sharath Kamal in sliding out of the top 100. Harmeet Desai reached the Round of 32 at the WTT Contender Rio last week, where Sathiyan was knocked out in the qualifying rounds.
Notably, it will be Sharath and Sathiyan, now ranked third and fourth among Indians, who will be fielded in men's singles at the upcoming Asian Games because they held higher ranks when the selection was done.
Sharath and Sathiyan's doubles pairing ranking also fell 11 spots to now be 67th. Both Manav/Manush and Manav/Harmeet pair are currently ranked higher than them.
Manika Batra fell one spot to 36th in women's singles, but she remains the only Indian singles player to have held some ground in a below-par year for top Indian table tennis players. She reached the Round of 32 in WTT Contender Lima in the first week of August.
In women's doubles, the top-ranked Indian pair remains the Sutirtha Mukherjee/Ayhika Mukherjee pair, who have fallen two spots to 22nd.
The highest ranking among all categories held by Indians are in mixed doubles - Manika and Sathiyan have fallen one spot here to be at 8th.
