Sharath Kamal eyes top-50 in world ranking

New Delhi: After defending the national title, Olympian Achanta Sharath Kamal is now aiming to break into top-50 in world ranking by the end of this year, during which he will also carry a million hopes in 2010 Commonwealth Games. Now world number 73, Sharath pulled off an upset in the recent Qatar Open in Dubai by taming the world number 24, Chen Weixing of Austria in a first-round clash and that has made him quite confident of achieving the target. "I have been wanting to break into the top-50 for a while now and hope I can do that this year. I did pretty well in the Qatar Open, beating the (world) number 24 Weixing and I think, that will make an impact on my ranking," Sharath told reporters.Speaking from Kuwait, where he has got direct entry to the singles main draw in the ongoing Kuwait Open, Sharath said: "I am expecting some good performance here and I guess, after the Kuwait Open my ranking would increase considerably." The Chennai paddler also welcomed Table Tennis Federation of India`s decision to give as many as 18 foreign tours to the players on run-up to the Commonwealth Games and said some good performance would help them secure a better seedings in the Delhi Games."Actually at the moment we are seeded number three among the teams but with a lot of these (international) tournaments, I guess, we would be seeded number two at least and could have a better draw for the Games," Sharath said. PTI