Suzhou, April 28, 2015: The capacity crowd at the Suzhou International Expo Centre was treated to a day upsets as the Qoros 2015 World Table Tennis Championships went into its third day.
The World Championships have got off to a frantic start, with 42 million people JUST in china watching the mixed doubles on CCTV last night. All table tennis media records are expected to be broken over the next six days here in Suzhou.
The eagerly anticipated men’s and women’s singles and doubles main draw commenced, and it did not disappoint, as it kept the entire crowd on the edge of their seats as the form book went out the window.
Defending Men’s Doubles champions, Chinese Taipei’s CHUANG Chih-Yuan and CHEN Chien-An suffered a shock defeat in the hands of the number 24th seeds, Simon GAUZY and Emmanuel LEBESSON (FRA) in the second round.
The French pair played some spectacular table tennis to win the cheers of the Chinese crowd, beating the 4th seeded CHUANG/CHEN 4-0 (11-7,12-10, 11-4, 11-9) to advance to the next round.
After their victory, an excited GAUZY stated: “Unbelievable! Our best ever result, we beat the World champions and we beat them four-nil in China! It just doesn’t get any better!”
The 20 year old added, “I think today I raised my level of receiving service, we kept making changes, that caused them problems and it enabled to take the initiative and dominate the points.”
Ranked 10th on the ITTF World Ranking, CHUANG was also knocked out early in the Men’s Singles to bid goodbye any medals title in Suzhou. He suffered a narrow defeat 4-3 by world number 90, Hungary’s Adam PATTANTYUS (11-6, 8-11, 6-11, 1-11, 11-7, 12-10, 9-11) in a massive upset result.
To continue the trend of upsets, Denmark’s Jonathan GROTH currently ranked 134 in the world defeated the world number 25 Kenta MATSUDAIRA who was the giant killer of the 2013 world championships beating MA Lin and Vladimir SAMSONOV.
Not long after GROTH’s career defining win, it was India’s Ghosh Soumyajit’s time to shine, as he was simply too good for the 2014 ITTF Male Table Tennis star Aruna QUADRI, the great African hope, winning 4-1.
The upsets were not confined to the men’s events, the Japanese 14 year old duo of Miu HIRANO and Mima ITO, who won the title at the 2014 World Tour Grand Finals, fell to the mixed nations pairing of LI Qian (POL) and LI Jie (NED) in the Women’s Doubles. Despite trying to make their comeback from 1-3 down to tie matters at 3-3, the Japanese girls eventually lost the decider to end their doubles dream.
The classic day of World Championship table tennis was capped off with the glamour men’s doubles match between Chinese superstars ZHANG Jike & XU Xin and the mixed nation pair of Timo BOLL and MA Long. The all Chinese pair were too strong for BOLL and MA, winning 4-2 and making themselves firm favourites for the title.
More action will resume at 10am (GMT+8) tomorrow at the Suzhou International Expo Centre. —- ITTF
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