Aruna only African listed for first-ever World Table Tennis Cup finals

Nigeria’s Quadri Aruna is the only African listed among the top twenty ranked male players in the globe that will take part in the first-ever World Table Tennis (WTT) Cup finals.

The WTT’s maiden edition is scheduled to take place at OCBC Arena in the Singapore Sports Hub between December 4 and 7, 2021.

Qualification for the WTT Cup finals was based on the ITTF table tennis world rankings published on November 16, 2021.

“The table tennis community and Singapore share a special bond and we are delighted that Singapore becomes the first-ever host of the WTT Cup Finals,” Steve Dainton, the CEO and director of ITTF and WTT said.

“We are grateful for the support of Sports Singapore which have collaborated closely with us over the past weeks to be able to bring this event to life.

“We are looking forward to further strengthening our partnership with the Lion City and to continuing hosting world-class events there.”

Singapore will also become the first country to host the first-ever WTT Cup finals.

Lim Teck Yin, CEO of Sport Singapore said: “We are honoured to be the host city for the inaugural WTT Cup Finals. Staging the event in Singapore signals our commitment to bring sport back safely for everyone.

“The WTT Cup Finals is an excellent opportunity to enliven our local table tennis community and inspire more young athletes to engage in the sport.”

The championship will see some of the world’s best men and women’s singles players battle it out to be crowned the season-ending champions.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the WTT Cup finals will consist of a combined event featuring men and women’s 16-player singles draws only.

The players will share a prize pool of $600,000.

The event will see both men and women players awarded equal prize money.

Other male players listed alongside Aruna include; Fan Zhendong (China), Hugo Calderano (Brazil), Tomokazu Harimoto (Japan), Yun-Ju Lin (Chinese Taipei), Gaoyuan Lin (China) Dimitrij Ovtcharov (Germany, Jingkun Liang (China), and Mattias Falck (Sweden).

Woojin Jang (Korea), Patrick Franziska (Germany), Liam Pitchford (England), Chuqin Wang (China), Simon Gauzy (France) and Lee Sangsu (Korea) also made the list.