Quadri scoops over 210 points at WTT in Doha

In a bid to hit the top 10 in the world, Aruna Quadri, has garnered a whopping 210 ranking points at the just concluded World Table Tennis (WTT) Star Contender Doha. The poster boy of Nigeria and Africa table tennis got the ranking points despite losing the semi-final match to South Korea’s Lim Jonghoon. Aruna […]

In a bid to hit the top 10 in the world, Aruna Quadri, has garnered a whopping 210 ranking points at the just concluded World Table Tennis (WTT) Star Contender Doha.

The poster boy of Nigeria and Africa table tennis got the ranking points despite losing the semi-final match to South Korea’s Lim Jonghoon.

Aruna has now set a new African record as the first player from the continent to make it to the semifinal of the WTT Star Contender and also the first player in the world to defeat three top Chinese players in a row to book a place in the last four.

On Thursday at the Lusail Sports Arena in Qatar, Aruna could not demystify his Korean opponent in the semifinal match as he fell 4-2 to his Asian counterpart to miss out on setting another African record

Jonghoon took a 2-1 lead over Aruna in three closely fought games. Aruna was first out the gate and had chances to take the second game but the Korean took a grip on the match.

In head-to-head encounters, Jonghoon led Aruna 2-0, but the Nigerian fought back to try and come up with something different to score his first win in Qatar.

In spite of going down 3-1 to the Korean, Aruna took the fifth game 12-10 and clawed his way back to 2-3 but Jonghoon maintained his perfect record against Aruna with a 4-2 (8-11, 13-11, 11-9, 11-1, 10-12, 11-5) win, putting an end to his epic run in Doha.

The 25-year-old World No.47 was beaten 4-2 later on in the final by Croatia’s Andrej Gacina.