Nigeria’s Quadri finishes in top 16 at ITTF World Tour in Spain

For the first time in recent time, Nigeria made its presence at the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF)-sanctioned World tagged Spanish Open after Aruna Quadri fought hard to be among the top 16 in the men’s singles of the championship. Besides being unseeded, Quadri fought his way from the preliminary rounds to make it to the main draw even in his quest he had to defeat homeboys in the presence of their fans. From the qualifying round, Quadri won all his matches against players from Jersey and Spain to join the 32 qualifiers that will battle the seeded players in the main draw. Fortunately, he was drawn against his first round opponent at the 2012 London Olympics, Spain’s Carlos Machado, who is also ranked in top 90 in the world. Despite being one of the biggest movers in the March ITTF ranking, Quadri is rated 197 in the world. But undeterred by what ranking read, Quadri made nonsense of the Spaniard winning the encounter at 11-6, 6-11, 9-11, 11-7, 11-8, 11-9 to progress to the last 32. Again the Portugal-based Nigerian was set up against another European in the last 32, where he met with France’s Mehdi Bouloussa. But this turned to be the easiest win for the Nigerian as he wasted no time to bundle out the Frenchman in a match that ended 11-5, 11-7, 12-10, 11-6 (4-0) to become the first Nigerian in recent time to play in the last 16 of any ITTF World Tour this year. But in the round of 16 game against one of the seeded players, Japan’s Masataka Morizono, Quadri could not withstand the pace of the Japanese as he fully surrendered to the Asian. The match went the way of the Japanese at 11-6, 11-7, 11-7, 12-10. Also in the men’s doubles, the pair of Quadri and Kazeem Makanjuola also made history by qualifying from the preliminary to play in the main draw. Although they eventually lost in the main draw (round of 16) to Chinese Taipei but they won crucial matches against Denmark and France. The performance of Nigeria will surely improve Quadri and Makanjuola world ranking in May. For Quadri, making it to the round of 16 was an indication that with more competitions, he can be among the best in the world. He however, admitted that he had to be at his best to win most of his matches at the Spanish Open. “None of my matches was a walkover but in the round of 64 match, I repeated London Olympic games victory against Carlos Machado of Spain in the same margin of 4-2 Bouloussa Mehdi could not cope with my style of play on time which gave me a four straight sets win to qualify for round of 16. I believe I could have gone further had it been I had some support like the other players from another countries,” he said. “It has not been very easy since February, because we could not afford to stay in organisers’ hotel due to our financial difficulty and we have been staying in another hotel more far from the tournament venue. Most times, we get tired and tired because we have to look for bus all the time from hotel to venue and from venue to hotel. We really need support and motivation and wit this things must will be changed in our country’s sports as priority is just given only on football,” he added.