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After months of dominance over Nigeria’s Aruna Quadri in the ITTF
ranking, Egypt’s Omar Assar has been displaced by the 2014 ITTF Star
Player in the March 2016 ITTF ranking released today.
From the latest rankings, Quadri returned to top 30 in the world from
the 37th place he was in February while Egypt’s Assar dropped to 36
following the defeat he suffered against Quadri at the ITTF Africa Top
16 Cup in Sudan.
At the just concluded ITTF World Team Championships in Malaysia,
Quadri only lost a match to highly-rated India’s Sharath Achanta while
Egypt’s Assar was defeated by lowly-rated players twice in Malaysia. The
defeat suffered by the Egyptian influenced his drop in the rankings.
With this, the Nigerian may be on his way to Rio Olympic Games in the
men’s event as Segun Toriola also made a triumphant return to the
rankings to become the third rated African player in the world.
Toriola, who acted as player/coach at the ITTF World Team
Championship in Malaysia played his heart out to be ranked 116 in the
world ahead of Egypt’s El-Sayed Lashin who dropped from 127 to 135.
Also, Nigeria’s Bode Abiodun continued his rise in the ranking as the
Portugal-base star is rated 185 to be the sixth rated African player in
the world.
According to Olympic team event qualification criteria, the rankings
of the three players in each country will determine their eventual
qualification for the Olympics.
As it is, Nigerian players are ranked higher than the Egyptians and
this was also confirmed by the President, African Table Tennis
Federation (ATTF), Khaled El-Salhy, who has said that it is May ranking
of the three top players in Nigeria and Egypt that will decide the
eventual team that will qualify for the men’s team event of the Rio
Olympic Games.
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