by Kabir Nagpal
At the end of a month of upsets and shock wins galore, Chen Meng retains her top spot on the women’s rankings but most noticeably, amongst other major changes, compatriot Liu Shiwen, who celebrated her fifth Women’s World Cup victory, becomes the world no.2.
In the month of October, it was anything but “as we were” in the women’s singles, despite Chen Meng entering another successive month as world no.1 (16,965 points).
The World-champion-turned-World-Cup-winner Liu Shiwen made a seismic jump from no.5 to no.2 as her points tally was up by 1290 points (15,360 points).
Following in her stead was 2019 ITTF-ATTU Asian Championships winner Sun Yingsha, who moved from no.6 to world no.3 with 14,895 points on the board; this shake-up hit China’s Ding Ning the hardest. She fell to the spot previously occupied by Sun, her 13,910 points could not make her break into the top five.
Zhu Yuling (no.4 – 14,330 points) and Wang Manyu (no.5 – 14,210 points) helped China keep the top six positions, with the Japanese duo, Mima Ito and Kasumi Ishikawa sitting in seventh and eighth places respectively, after a slightly underwhelming Women’s World Cup.
The final major mover was Singapore’s Feng Tianwei (11,660 points). She broke into the top 10 ahead of Miu Hirano and rose three places to world no.9 after reaching the semi-finals of both the ITTF World Tour Platinum German Open and the Women’s World Cup.
