Oyo-born Aruna Quadri has crashed out of the World Table Tennis (WTT) Contender Series of the men’s singles tournament in Doha, Qatar on Friday.
The Nigerian table tennis star lost 3-1 to Yun-Ju Lin of China Taipei at the quarter final stage.
The only surviving African player in the WTT failed to go past his world no. 7 ranked opponent after his triumph over Joao Geraldo of Portugal in the round of 16 on Thursday.
The world no. 21 player fought gallantly in the three sets played — which saw him lose 8-11 in the first game.
Just like the first, the second game was full of rallies and both players matched themselves shots for shots with the Asian star having an upper hand with 9-11 win.
The third game saw the Nigerian number one player level on point at 10-10. Both players won point by point but Aruna prevailed at 17-15 to put the match at 2-1.
Aruna led 6-4 in game four but it ended 9-11 in favour of Lin.
Despite Aruna’s exit in the quarterfinal, he has set a standard for African players to look beyond the quarterfinal at the WTT tournament.
