By Adeyemi Robinson-Adefioye, Lagos
Nigeria’s Quadri Aruna continued his good run at the ongoing World Table Tennis (WTT) Star Contender after he advanced to the third round (round of 16) of the men’s singles in Doha, Qatar.
It was a convincing 3-1 win over Japan’s Masataka Morizono by the Nigerian who remains the only African still in the race at the $400,000 prize money tournament.
Being the third meeting between the two players, it was Aruna that dominated from the start of the encounter against Morizono, and this also reflected in the outcome of the tie played on Tuesday March 9, 2021.
Matching the Japanese shot-for-shot, Aruna was in charge in the first game which he won 11-6; he repeated the same form in the second game to win at 11-9. But in the third game, he lost concentration to concede defeat to the Japanese at 11-1.
A determined Aruna returned to the table in the fourth game and he raised his performance to dominate from 7-7 before eventually winning at 11-7 to complete the 3-1 rout of his opponent.
With the win, Aruna now had an edge over Morizono in their three meetings with the Nigerian winning twice while the Japanese won once.
The Nigerian will again battle another Japanese star Harimoto Tamakazu in the third round on Wednesday March 10 in his quest to exceed the quarterfinal finish he achieved at the WTT Contender Series last week.
Egypt’s Dina Meshref failed to advance to the third round after losing to Chinese Taipei’s Szu-Yu Chen 3-1 (19-17, 4-11, 9-11, 9-11) while her compatriot Ahmed Saleh also failed to progress after losing 3-0 (11-8, 11-5, 11-2) to WTT Contender Series champion Dimitrij Ovtcharov of Germany.
