Sreeja Akula becomes India's number 1 TT player by surpassing Manika

In the latest ITTF Table Tennis World Rankings released on 23 April 2024, Sreeja Akula jumped one place to 38th in the world ranking. With this Sreeja Akula became the top ranked women's singles table tennis player in India. In this sequence, Sreeja Akula left Manika Batra behind.

Sreeja Akula's performance was better in 2024:

• Sreeja has performed well so far in 2024. Sreeja has managed to win the WTT Feeder Corpus Christi and WTT Feeder Beirut titles in January and March respectively. Apart from this, WTT reached the quarter finals of Star Contender in Goa.
• The 25-year-old Sreeja won her first international tournament by defeating USA's Lily Zhang 3-0 in the final of the WTT Feeder Corpus Christi 2024 in Texas in January.
• Sreeja also won the WTT Feeder Beirut II singles title by defeating Luxembourg's Sarah De Nutte 3-1 in the final.
• Sreeja achieved victory over then world No. 2 Wang Yidi of China in the group stage of the World Team Table Tennis Championships in Busan in February. Sreeja has also been a two-time national champion. Sreeja also won a Commonwealth Games gold medal in mixed doubles with Sharath Kamal in 2022.
• Recently, Sreeja had lost to defending Olympic champion and world No. 4 Chen Meng in the group stage of the ITTF World Cup 2024 in Macao, China.

Manika Batra's ranking declined:

• Manika, on the other hand, has not played too many feeder tournaments recently. As a result She lost several ranking points. She has 526 ranking points compared to Sreeja's 529.
• Manika, who was India's number one TT player for quite some time, slipped two places to 39th in the latest update.
• Both Sreeja and Manika are participating in Saudi Smash 2024. Saudi Smash 2024 will be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia from 1 May 2024.

Indians in top 100 in women's singles global rankings:

• Apart from Sreeja and Manika, Yashaswini Ghorpade (world no. 99) and Archana Kamath (world no. 100) are the other Indians in the top 100 of the women's singles rankings.
• Olympians Sutirtha Mukherjee and Ayhika Mukherjee both slipped two places to 122nd and 137th respectively.

Best ranked Indian players in men's singles:

• In men's singles, Sharath Kamal is still the best-ranked Indian player at world No. 37.
• Sathiyan Gnanasekaran has jumped one place to 60th. He left behind Manav Thakkar, who is ranked at number 61.
• Harmeet Desai has also lost one place and is now at 64th position in the rankings.

Ranking of Indian players in men's doubles:

• Manav Thakkar and Manush Shah are ranked 12th in men's doubles. They are ahead of the experienced pair of G Sathiyan and Sharath Kamal, who are ranked 59th.

Ranking of Indian players in women's doubles:

• Sutirtha and Ayhika Mukherjee are ranked 14th in the world in women's doubles rankings. Sreeja Akula and Diya Chitale are placed 28th while Manika Batra and Archana Kamath are placed 50th in the world rankings.

Ranking of Indian players in mixed doubles:

• In the mixed doubles rankings, Sathiyan and Manika have slipped one place to 19th. Thakkar and Kamath remain at number 33 in the world rankings. While Chitale and Shah also maintained their ranking of number 38.