Chirag-Satwiksairaj break Saina Nehwal's BWF number one ranking record

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty break Saina Nehwal's record for most weeks at number one in BWF rankings.

The top-ranked Indian men’s doubles duo of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty has overtaken the record of Saina Nehwal for spending the most number of weeks at number one in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) world ranking by an Indian. The hard-hitting duo, which has secured several landmark BWF titles and other championship wins/medals since 2022, has been at the top for 10 weeks. Nehwal, who held the previous record, secured the top position on August 18, 2015, and stayed there for nine weeks till October 21, 2015, as per Olympics.com.

The Asian Games champions secured the top spot this year after they made it to the finals of the China Open, Malaysia Open and India Open. A French Open title win solidified their stronghold of the number one ranking. The ranking system takes into account the 10 highest-scoring events by a player/pair in the preceding 52 weeks. Currently, Chirag-Satwik have 1,02,303 points to their name on the leaderboard and are over 5,000 points clear of the second-ranked South Korean pair of Kang Min Hyuk and Seo Seung Jae.

In October last year, following their triumph at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, ‘Sat-Chi’ became the first Indian doubles pair ever to reach to the top of the BWF Rankings. But they could hold the top spots for just three weeks. In the men’s singles, Kidambi Srikanth reached the top in April 2018 but could last only a week there.

Legendary shuttler Prakash Padukone, the first-ever Indian to secure the prestigious All England Open title in 1980 was regarded as number one during his prime, but the computerised ranking point systems came much later in the sport.