The consistent Divij Sharan broke into the top-50 for a career-high ranking while Sania Mirza dropped out of top-10 for the first time since March 2014 as the latest ATP and WTA charts were issued on Monday.
The left-handed Sharan reached the final of the last three tournaments he participated in, winning the ATP 250 European Open while ending runner-up at Challenger events in Brest and Tashkent with different partners. He is ranked exactly 50th after gaining a place. Now India has two top-50 players in doubles with Rohan Bopanna (15) leading the chart.
Purav Raja (62), Leander Paes (70) and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan (97) are the other top-100 Indian players.
Also making good progress in the doubles is Vishnu Vardhan, who jumped 16 places to touch his career-best ranking of 118. Vardhan and his partner N. Sriram Balaji (139) had won the Shenzhen Challenger on Saturday to earn 90 ranking points each.
In the singles, Yuki Bhambri (140) continues to lead the chart and is followed by Ramkumar Ramanathan (148), Prajnesh Gunneswaran (255), Sumit Nagal (331) and Balaji (350).
In the WTA charts, Ankita Raina is India’s top-ranked player at number 281 and is followed by Karman Kaur Thandi (307) and Pranjala Yadlapalli (483).
In the doubles, Sania was placed at number 12 following a loss of three places.
Sania figured consistently in top-10 since March 17, 2013. The last time she featured outside top-10 was on March 3, 2013.
The Hyderabadi was world number one in doubles through the entire 2016 season. Her slide started this season, which she began as number one but could not qualify for the year-end WTA Finale, where top-eight pairs and top-eight singles players compete.