For the second time in two days, A. Sharath Kamal experienced the joy of reaching his career-high ranking, thanks to the revision of the world list by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF).
Placed 45th on Thursday evening when the list for August was released, Sharath found himself moved to the 39th spot late on Friday night following a correction carried out by the world body.
Sharath, in the city for the 40th inter-institutional table tennis championship, had said last month that he was expecting to be ranked 39th following his brilliant performances over two weeks that saw him capture the U.S. Open and Qatar Open titles.
“In fact, it was my brother Rajath, who called up and pointed to an article on the ITTF website which said I had jumped from 76 (in July) to 39. I thought it could be an oversight but still wanted to write to the ITTF to know the correct ranking. But, before sending the email, I thought of checking out the ranking list one last time. When I did check, for a moment, I could not believe that it was indeed 39th. The revised list was posted sometime late evening,” said a delighted Sharath on Friday night.
Explaining the pleasant change on Saturday, Secretary-General of the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) Dhanraj Choudhary said, “Till last year, the U.S. Open did not offer world ranking points. This time, the ranking points earned from the U.S. Open were added to the tally of Sharath and others only last night. From the next year, U.S. Open will be made part of the ITTF Pro Tour.”
The revised rankings also benefited A. Amalraj who moved up two places to 191 and Subhajit Saha climbed three spots to 207. However, Soumyadeep Roy slipped one rung to 241. But the trio, along with Saurav Chakraborty (288) improved upon their July rankings.
Big jump
Among women, Mouma Das jumped 21 spots to reach 204 while Poulomi Ghatak climbed 17 rungs to be 241. Madhurika Patkar (249) and K. Shamini (290) followed the Bengal duo.
In the boys' rankings, for the first time in six months, Soumyadeep Ghosh (38) and G. Sathiyan (50) kept company in the world top-50 list. Harmeet Desai (101) is the next best Indian in the list.
