BY Remi Sulola
Nigeria suffered its first defeat at the 2018 ITTF World Team Championships in Halmstad, Sweden.
Having won against Turkey and Argentina, Nigeria was on the losing side on Tuesday against Slovakia.
The West African side fielded the trio of Segun Toriola, Aruna Quadri, and Olajide Omotayo against Slovakia’s trio of Lubomir Pistej, Wang Yang, and Samuel Novota.
It was Toriola that first tasted a 3-0 defeat by Pistej but Aruna Quadri restored parity with an overwhelming 3-0 bashing of Yang.
Omotayo, who has been superb so far in the tournament, narrowly lost 2-3 to Novota to give the Slovak team a 2-1 lead.
In the fourth game, Toriola was beaten 3-0 by Yang to hand Nigeria its first defeat of the competition.
Nigeria will confront Australia and Bulgaria to determine their qualification to the knockout stage of the competition on Wednesday.
For Egypt, the fight to remain in the championship division remains the main goal.
Having lost four matches, Egypt will be walking on tight rope when it takes on the host Sweden in the last group game of the competition.
The women’s team will face Russia after also recording four losses.
For Egypt’s Ahmed Saleh, the fight to remain in the elite division is paramount.
“I think playing in the championship has not been easy but we have been trying our best in the three matches played so far,” Saleh said.
“Particularly, the match against Germany which Omar Assar had a good performance.
“While we also tried but we were just unlucky to have lost.
“Now we are out of fighting for the top three in the group as we will be aiming to maintain our status in the Championship.”
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