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

puneets · Post by **puneets** » Mon Jan 16, 2006 10:24 pm

India1989 wrote:Did you guys miss Sania Mirza over here. She had a career high ranking of either 33 or 34.

Soumo - This is the Golden Oldies thread.

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 11:37 am

Yep, this is the Golden Oldies section (and the thread talks of "former players"). So Sania doesn't qualify!
But for the record (and in case this forum is still here 15 years from now, when it might be OK to include Sania here), she reached a ranking of 31 during her first full year on the WTA tour.

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 3:17 am

Updated list of highest singles rankings of Indian players in the Open era (including current players) who made the top-150 (does not include ranks before 1973):

Vijay Amritraj - 16
Ramesh Krishnan - 23
Leander Paes- 73
Anand Amritraj - 74
Sashi Menon - 87
Jasjit Singh - 89
Premjit Lall - 105
Jaidip Mukherjea - 120
Zeeshan Ali - 126
(Ramanathan Krishnan - 136 in 1978, when he was 41! Ranked #3 in 1961, in the pre-Open era)
Lall and Mukherjea also would have been in the top-50 in 1965-66 before the Open era. I believe these ATP rankings (from their site) start only in 1973; before that, Lall and Mukherjea were likely to have been ranked consistently in the top-100.

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 3:28 am

The list of the next category of players (with career-high ranks between 151 and 420):

Akshai Misra - 158
Srinivas Vasudevan - 166
Bhanu Nunna - 199 (before turning pro, he was called Nunna Bhanumurthy)
Ashok Amritraj - 201
Joykumar Royappa - 207
Prakash Amritraj - 220
Chiradeep Mukherjea - 221 (amateur; never turned pro, but made R2 at Wimbledon)
Harsh Mankad - 222
Rohan Bopanna - 235
Nandan Bal - 309
Srinath Prahlad - 310
Bidyut Goswami - 315
Karan Rastogi - 327
Sunil Kumar Sipaeya - 340
Enrico Piperno -373
Shankar Krishnan -373
Syed Fazaluddin - 396
R. Elangovan - 403
Asif Ismail - 412

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 11:57 am

We haven't done this exercise for the women, as there have only been three Indian women ranked in the top-200 in the Open era (Sania Mirza, Nirupama Vaidyanathan and Shikha Uberoi), with Sunitha probably in the mix now.

Sania is the first (and so far, only) Indian woman to be ranked in the top-100, top-50, top-30. It is interesting to note that she is now edging very close to Ramesh Krishnan as the second-highest ranked Indian pro (male or female) in the Open era. Ramesh did make the USO QF twice (1981, 1987) and the Wimbledon QF once (1984), but the magnificent consistency Sania has shown in the current hard-court season is something that we never really got from either Ramesh or Vijay (during the US hardcourt season). Of course, Sania has only 1 tour title, so she is well behind Ramesh on that score. But I suspect she will soon surpass Ramesh's career-high ranking of 23.

gbelday · Post by **gbelday** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 4:48 pm

Thanks PKB. How about Narendranath? I am not sure if he ever made it into the top 400?

Narendranath is the offical coach for the Indian juniors at the current US Open. He and a few other Indian juniors are at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan (right next to my office).

sameerph · Post by **sameerph** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 5:28 pm

gbelday wrote: Thanks PKB. How about Narendranath? I am not sure if he ever made it into the top 400?

Narendranath is the offical coach for the Indian juniors at the current US Open. He and a few other Indian juniors are at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan (right next to my office).

Who are the other Indian juniors playing at USO ? I find only Yuki, Rupesh ( in boys qualifying ) & Poojashree ( in girls ) in entry list.

gbelday · Post by **gbelday** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 5:49 pm

Janaki is another one that Poojashree told me about...

BTW, Pooja is 1 out. She will know tomorrow if she made it to the main draw. Also, does anyone know that Poojashree is over 6 ft tall (6:1 to be precise). I have to look up to talk to her

My wife has to really look up

Mr. Venkatest is also over 6ft. Pooja;s younger sister, who is just 15 is close to 6ft.

Post by **jayakris** » Wed Aug 29, 2007 6:12 pm

I knew she was around 6 feet. She has a big serve too. One of the reasns I have been up on her for quite a long time, and have been waiting for long for her to break through.

She was tall, even when she had all those nice wins in the Nike world event in the u14 in South Africa long back ..

Jay

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 2:23 pm

Updated list of highest singles rankings attained by Indian male professionals since the ATP computer rankings began in 1973:

Vijay Amritraj - 16
Ramesh Krishnan - 23
Leander Paes- 73
Anand Amritraj - 74
Sashi Menon - 87
Jasjit Singh - 89
Premjit Lall - 105
Jaidip Mukherjea - 120
Zeeshan Ali - 126
Ramanathan Krishnan -136
Akshai Misra - 158
Srinivas Vasudevan - 166
Bhanu Nunna - 199 (before turning pro, he was called Nunna Bhanumurthy)
Ashok Amritraj - 201
Prakash Amritraj -204
Joykumar Royappa - 207
Rohan Bopanna - 213
Mahesh Bhupathi - 217
Chiradeep Mukherjea - 221 (amateur; never turned pro, but made R2 at Wimbledon)
Harsh Mankad - 222
Nandan Bal - 309
Srinath Prahlad - 310
Bidyut Goswami - 315
Karan Rastogi - 327
Sunil Kumar Sipaeya - 340
Enrico Piperno -373
Shankar Krishnan -373
Syed Fazaluddin - 396

The usual caveats continue to apply about Ramanathan Krishnan, Premjit Lall and Jaideep Mukherjea. Krish was ranked #3 in 1961, before the professional era and Jaideep and Premjit would have been in the top-20 and top-30 at their peak in the pre-Open era -- and Jaideep probably around 30-35 in 1968-69, the first couple of years of the Open era. But Prakash Amritraj is now close to surpassing his uncle Ashok's career-high ranking.

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 11:58 pm

Thanks for pointing that out. I have added him back in.

prasen9 · Post by **prasen9** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 12:13 am

So, I must consider myself lucky (and spoilt) for starting to watch tennis when Vijay and Ramesh were at their prime. And then LP. I suppose that is why the disappointment at those that came after LP. Hopefully, Somdev will rise to new heights and give us another decade of brilliant Indian tennis.

p.s. It is sad that the promise of Zeeshan was never fulfilled and he just disappeared. He was #126 or so when he was 19, up and coming and then he fell off the chart.

Rajiv · Post by **Rajiv** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 10:29 am

zeeshans case is a dream gone sour , promised so much but only faltered to deceive.
the turning point was 1989 after reaching a career high in dec '88 he was thrust in the limelight as not only the #1 in India but #1 in Asia as well,
Ramesh had taken a mini sabbatical and Vijay with his spat with aita was out of the equation and all of a sudden he was the #1 Asian and the next immediate challenge was the dc tie against the Koreans in bharuch which he as spearhead was expected to carry India forward as the previous heady years culminating in dc finals were very much fresh , but as always Koreans have our number, and a tie which was suppose to be cakewalk on home turf(grass) we ended up loosing and that's what shattered his confidence and than after the tie what was suppose to be next graduating step on the atp tour it put a spanner and he got embroiled in the satellite circuit from which he never quite recovered and all of sudden he was not the same kind of player anymore , just one loss dc loss where expectations were immense changed it all.
Another point which went sorely against him was that he had no peer around during that crucial period to guide,coax,cajole as Vijay,Ramesh,Lp were lucky to have a senior pro around , this also dented his progress to a much larger extent.

Post by **jayakris** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:39 pm

... In other words, he has only himself to blame for not staying confident and becoming what he could have been. Sometimes, the sportsmen need to just buckle down and do it on their own. Two years later LP did that. He too had ZERO help from anybody except his dad and a few foreigners. Took him 2-3 years to deal with it, but he did.

Jay

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 3:01 pm

Well, not quite! I think Leander had quite a bit of help from the AITA (or the tennis establishment in India) in the form of home Challengers (many of them on grass) and then the new Indian Open (in Delhi and then Chennai) that came along to help him get his singles career going. In Ramesh's time, the Indian Open inexplicably vanished so he really had to do it on his own. I personally recall Ramesh himself helping Leander in 1992-93 (often playing tournaments just to give Leander company), but I don't think he was able to do the same for Zeeshan (although I was struggling to find a post-grad-school job, etc., in the US in 1989, so that period is a bit of a blur for me...).

That said, I agree that ultimately a player must take responsibility for his own career and Zeeshan does deserve some of the responsibility for giving up on his career when he couldn't capitalise on being #126 at the age of 19. Had he persevered and worked on his game, there is no reason why he couldn't have made a viable pro career after the setbacks in his second and third year on the tour. We have discussed some of this in one of the other threads earlier though...

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