PTI

New Delhi, Apr 2: Ace shuttler Saina Nehwal has jumped one place to the eighth spot, while a place in the finals of the Indian Open Super Series catapulted the mixed doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and V Diju to the elite top 10 bracket in world rankings.

Jwala and Diju put up a stupendous show at the Indian Open Grand Prix Gold and reached the finals of the event before going down to Flandy Limpele and Vita Marissa of Indonesia. However, the Indian duo's performance was good enough to crack the top 10.

"I am very happy. I personally never expected to break into the top 10 so soon. From now onwards we would look to win some Super Series events and if we can do that we would definitely zoom further up, may be seven or eight," Diju said.

Elated at the news, Jwala said they would look for a top five berth by the year end.

"We would definitely look to crack the top five now," said Jwala, who along with Diju won three tournaments last year -- the Bulgaria Open Grand Prix, Bitburger Grand Prix Open and the Nepal International Series.

This year the Indian duo reached the semi-finals of Korea Super Series and quarter-finals of German Open Grand Prix.

The Indian pair will now look to repeat their feat in the forth coming Asian Badminton Championship starting on April 6 in Korea.

"We are looking to win the title. The initial rounds seems relatively easy and I feel if there are no upsets, we can make it to the finals," Jwala said.

Diju, however, sounded cautious. "There are some Chinese players and they are quite good so I am just looking at giving my best shot," he said.

However, in the women's doubles category, Jwala made it clear that she would not pair up with Shruti Kurian.

"I think there is some confusion because I have already made my stand clear that I won't play with Shruti in the ABC. In Sudhirman Cup, well, I have to play for the sake of the country but for the open tournaments I would never want to pair with her.

"So Sudhirman Cup would be our last assignment and after that I would pair up with Ashwini Ponnappa," she added.

Meanwhile, Anup Sridhar's pre-quarterfinal appearance in Hyderabad helped him to jump eight places to the 40th spot.

However, a second round exit in the Indian Open pushed Chetan Anand one place down the rung at number 13, while Arvind Bhat, who exited in the second round of Indian Open after a clash with eventual winner Taufik Hidayat, remained at number 28th spot.