Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

All posts regarding past greats should be made under this heading.

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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by PKBasu »

Vijay Amritraj - 16
Ramesh Krishnan - 23
Somdev Devvarman - 62
Leander Paes- 73
Anand Amritraj - 74
Sashi Menon - 87
Yuki Bhambri - 88
Jasjit Singh - 89
Premjit Lall - 105
Jaidip Mukherjea - 120
Zeeshan Ali - 126
Ramanathan Krishnan -136
Saketh Myneni -138
Prakash Amritraj - 154
Akshai Misra - 158
Srinivas Vasudevan – 166
Ramkumar Ramanathan - 196
Bhanu Nunna - 199
Ashok Amritraj - 201
Joykumar Royappa - 207
Rohan Bopanna - 213
Mahesh Bhupathi - 217
Chiradeep Mukherjea - 221
Harsh Mankad – 222
Vishnu Vardhan -262
Sanam Singh - 266
Prajnesh Gunneswaran -267
N. Sriram Balaji - 284
Karan Rastogi – 284
Jeevan Neduncheziyan - 293

Balaji enters the list for the first time, and Prajnesh is at a new career-high.
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by PKBasu »

Vijay Amritraj - 16
Ramesh Krishnan - 23
Somdev Devvarman - 62
Leander Paes- 73
Anand Amritraj - 74
Sashi Menon - 87
Yuki Bhambri - 88
Jasjit Singh - 89
Premjit Lall - 105
Jaidip Mukherjea - 120
Zeeshan Ali - 126
Ramanathan Krishnan -136
Saketh Myneni -138
Prakash Amritraj - 154
Akshai Misra - 158
Srinivas Vasudevan – 166
Ramkumar Ramanathan - 168
Bhanu Nunna - 199
Ashok Amritraj - 201
Joykumar Royappa - 207
Rohan Bopanna - 213
Prajnesh Gunneswaran -214
Mahesh Bhupathi - 217
Chiradeep Mukherjea - 221
Harsh Mankad – 222
Vishnu Vardhan -262
Sanam Singh - 266
Karan Rastogi – 284
N. Sriram Balaji - 287
Jeevan Neduncheziyan - 293

New career highs for RamK and Prajnesh.
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by VReddy »

Refreshing this list. Ram moves into the 14th spot while Sumit makes an entry to this list

Vijay Amritraj - 16
Ramesh Krishnan - 23
Somdev Devvarman - 62
Leander Paes- 73
Anand Amritraj - 74
Sashi Menon - 87
Yuki Bhambri - 88
Jasjit Singh - 89
Premjit Lall - 105
Jaidip Mukherjea - 120
Zeeshan Ali - 126
Ramanathan Krishnan -136
Saketh Myneni -138
Ramkumar Ramanathan - 151
Prakash Amritraj - 154
Akshai Misra - 158
Srinivas Vasudevan – 166
Bhanu Nunna - 199
Ashok Amritraj - 201
Joykumar Royappa - 207
Rohan Bopanna - 213
Prajnesh Gunneswaran - 213
Mahesh Bhupathi - 217
Chiradeep Mukherjea - 221
Harsh Mankad – 222
Sumit Nagal - 261
Vishnu Vardhan -262
Sanam Singh - 266
Karan Rastogi – 284
N. Sriram Balaji - 287
Jeevan Neduncheziyan - 293
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by prasen9 »

Do we need to normalize these ranks by the population of the world at that time to understand their true impact? Or the number of tennis players (which may be harder to estimate)? :p
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by Atithee »

Perhaps number of tennis courts available, ideally open to public. But that number maybe zero in India.
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by sameerph »

Updating the list -

Vijay Amritraj - 16
Ramesh Krishnan - 23
Somdev Devvarman - 62
Leander Paes- 73
Anand Amritraj - 74
Sashi Menon - 87
Yuki Bhambri - 88
Jasjit Singh - 89
Premjit Lall - 105
Jaidip Mukherjea - 120
Zeeshan Ali - 126
Ramanathan Krishnan -136
Ramkumar Ramanathan - 136
Saketh Myneni -138
Prakash Amritraj - 154
Akshai Misra - 158
Srinivas Vasudevan – 166
Bhanu Nunna - 199
Ashok Amritraj - 201
Joykumar Royappa - 207
Rohan Bopanna - 213
Prajnesh Gunneswaran - 213
Mahesh Bhupathi - 217
Chiradeep Mukherjea - 221
Harsh Mankad – 222
Sumit Nagal - 223
Vishnu Vardhan -262
Sanam Singh - 266
Karan Rastogi – 284
N. Sriram Balaji - 287
Jeevan Neduncheziyan - 293

RamK moves past Saketh and tied with great Ramanathan Krishnan at 12th spot.

Technically, there are still 10 active players in the list. But, Rohan has given up singles long back and Jeevan has almost done the same now. Expect Vishnu and Balaji to do the same this year. Sanam seems to have unofficially retired too.
So, in effect only 5 players who seem to have a chance to further improve on their career high rankings - Yuki, RamK, Saketh, Sumit and Prajnesh.
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by rajitghosh »

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Gr ... x_(tennis)
Ramanathan krishnan at 136 continues to bug me. As per the ATP site that was in 1978. In 1978, senior Krishnan did not play on the tour. Check outthe link. Ramesh Krishnan did play and reached the semis at Hong Kong and quarters at Calcutta. So he was probably ranked 136 that year.
In fact, Krishnan senior won 2 titles in 1968 after tennis went open- at Canada and Stuttgart. These are not reflected on the ATP site. Can we get them to correct the mistakes?
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by jayakris »

Whatever the reason, we know that #136 is utter BS when it comes to Krishnan Sr. People in the official/unofficial rankings definitely ranked him in the top-5 at his peak, and he remains as the best ever we have produced, in world ranking and respect.
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by prasen9 »

This was before my time. So, I don't know much. Better than Amritraj who was part of the ABC of tennis? BTW, was that phrase primarily used in India or world-wide?
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by rajitghosh »

Vijay Amritraj did better overall than Krishnan Senior given the competition. Vijay played in the Open era. In Krishnan's time the top players were professionals. So Pancho Gonzalves, Ken Rosewall, Lew Hoad and later on Laver and Fraser all played on the pro tour.
In Lance Tingay's ranking Krishnan was ranked 6th in 1961 among amateurs but only 17th taking professionals into consideration.
Krishnan never beat players like Ken Rosewall, Lew Hoad and Mal Anderson during their amateur days.
In Vijay's case the only top player he never beat was Ivan Lendl.
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by Prashant »

Open era dominance >> amateur era dominance as Rajit points out.

I have read that the ABC thing was general use for a very brief period after Vijay beat Connors, but it quickly faded outside of India.
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by rajitghosh »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_num ... is_players

Check out this page and the section on 1961. Krishnan was 17th. The top 10 as well as 12 (Mal Anderson) were all professionals. Krishnan had an offer to turn professional in 1959 itself when we won Queen's but he turned it down since he could not play Davis Cup and Wimbledon. But had he played on the professional tour he would have faced tougher competition and his game may have improved further.

As a side note even among amateurs Krishnan never beat Manuel Santana and I think beat Luis Ayala only once. He did well against Emerson, Fraser and Laver and won some matches against Drobny, Pietrangeli, Stolle and Olmedo.

Vijay beat Connors, McEnroe (including a win in 1984), Ashe, Stan Smith, Borg, Wilander, Nastase, Jan Kodes, Vilas and many other top players.
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by jayakris »

I guess all I remember as a 10 to 15 year old was Vijay Amritraj losing anything that seemed to matter, every time I looked up. All the big talk in the newspapers about "can this be the year he wins it all" about Wimbledon and Forest Hills, but then seeing that he didn't even make it to the QF or SF anywhere... And repeated losses to no-name guys like Onni Parun!

But the "ABC of tennis" from when he was 19 or 20 was real, because he was indeed among the best young players at that time. The term was coined by the great tennis writer/commentator Bud Collins. It only lasted probably for a year or two, I believe.

In any case, he was a great player. No huge objection, if all of you want to say that he was as good or even a bit better than Krishnan Sr. I would disagree if you say much better, because the respect that Krishnan Sr had at his peak (and he sustained it a bit longer, may be?) was more than VA had at his peak, from what I understand. Perhaps it was because so many guys were only playing pro tennis, and were being taken as mercenaries and not respected.

Or maybe I am biased from hearing my dad's opinion in the 70s when I was young, that guys like VA were useless, all just talk, and nothing like the great Ramanathan Krishnan who used to "make the Lavers and Emersons shake in their boots".
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by Prashant »

The ATP site shows him as 0-1 vs Laver and 1-2 vs Emerson. I'm guessing he had some amateur wins that aren't included?
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Re: Highest rankings of all the former Indian players please????

Post by rajitghosh »

http://www.tennisarchives.com/player.php?playerid=1926

The results are incomplete. He beat Laver at least thrice, Emerson 8 times and Fraser 5 times. He lost to Fraser twice. Both were important matches. The 1960 Wimbledon semi final and 1959 Davis Cup inter zone finals. Incidentally in the same Davis Cup match he beat Laver. The link giver here has his complete results except Davis Cup that is available on the Davis Cup site.
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