A day after her birthday, Hyderabad-based badminton champion Saina Nehwal has now broken into the top 5 rankings of world badminton. Her career-best rank of No. 5 followed her brilliant show in the All England Badminton Championships that were held earlier this month. Her 58516.7646 points let her move up from No. 6 to No. 5.
Saina was the first Indian woman to reach the semi-finals of the All-England Open. Earlier, she had reached the semi-finals of the World Super Series Masters Final, and also the quarter-finals of the World Championships, Malaysian Open, Denmark Open, French Super Series, Swiss Open, Indian Open and Singapore Open in 2009. She won the Phillippines Open in 2006, as well as the the Yonex Chinese Taipei Open in 2008.
Chinese players dominate the world rankings, and Saina is behind 4 of them - Yihan Wang (1), Wang Lin (2), Xin Wang (3) and Jiang Yanjiao (4). There are 6 Chinese in the top 10 overall.
As for the men's rankings, Chetan Anand dropped to 10th but P Kashyap gained one spot to be 29th. Arvind Bhat remains at 36th, and Anup Sridhar slipped to 40th from 39th. In the mixed doubles rankings, Jwala Gutta and V Diju's pair slipped one spot to 10th.