Sports

Aruna into last-16 at WTT Star Contender after beating Japan’s Morizono

Published

3 years ago

March 9, 2021

Nigeria’s Quadri Aruna has reached the round of 16 of the men’s singles event at the World Table Tennis (WTT) Star Contender in Doha, Qatar.

Aruna, remains the only African still in the race at the $400,000 prize money tournament, advanced after a convincing 3-1 win over Japan’s Masataka Morizono on Tuesday.

Being the third meeting between the two players, it was Aruna who dominated from the start of the encounter against Morizono, and this also reflected in the outcome of the tie.

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 have an edge over Morizono in their three meetings with the Nigerian winning twice while the Japanese has 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.

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now