Want to play with Sharan in Tokyo Olympics but we need to raise our ranking: Bopanna

Indian tennis ace Rohan Bopanna on Friday said he plans to team up with Divij Sharan and represent the country at the men's doubles event in next year's Olympics but for that to happen, they need to keep their rankings high.

Bopanna started the year playing alongside the left-handed Sharan and won the Pune Open title.

"I started in Pune with Divij. Obviously, me and Divij wanted to try to play the whole year together but unfortunately our rankings were not high enough," Bopanna, who has subsequently partnered Canadian Denis Shapovalov, said in an e-mail interaction.

"And we had to forcefully change partners in March because we were not getting into any of the 500s or Masters Series events and with Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Monte Carlo, Madrid, Rome all coming up, it was for us to find different partners or just miss the entire season and not play at all.

"Unfortunately at that point we had no option but to change partners wherever we can play together we are still ..