Nigerian duo of Aruna Quadri and Kazeem Makanjuola have crashed out of the men’s singles event at the ongoing International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) World Tour tagged Kuwait Open.

Makanjuola was the first to say goodbye to the tournament after failing to win a game in his two matches against his French and Portuguese counterparts. The debutant at the ITTF World Tour lost to Frenchman Benjamin Brossier 5-11, 9-11, 8-11, 5-11, and suffered another defeat against Portugal’s Joao Monteiro 10-12, 7-11, 6-11, 7-11

Portugal-based Aruna Quadri started his campaign in group nine with a 13-11, 11-8, 11-8, 11-6 win over Egypt’s Mohamed Elsobky but failed to progress after losing to Russia’s Alexey Liventsov 11-7, 9-11, 11-8, 11-9, 11-7 to exit the singles event.

Winner of the Lagos Table Tennis International Classics, Egypt’s Omar Assar could not advance to the main draw after a narrow loss to Singapore’s Zhaoxu Xin in an encounter that ended 11-9, 5-11, 11-4, 9-11, 7-11, 11-5, 9-11 having recorded a 4-2 win over Korea’s Chan-Hyeok Park in his first group match.

The only African player flying in the men’s singles is Egypt’s Ahmed Saleh, who won his two matches to seal a place in the last 64.

Speaking after his exit, Quadri admitted that he played well but that his opponent was more tactical in his approach to the game.

“Nothing went wrong during the match because I played better than the first game that I won. I want to say that there was so much difference when compared to my performance in this same tour three years ago. My opponent did not win an easy point. Before I used to have difficult in receiving service but this year I was able to overcome this. I hope to do better at the Qatar Open next week,” Quadri said.

The Nigerian representatives will be hoping for a better outing in the men’s doubles.