Table Tennis: TJ’s National Open Tourney Debuts

Impressed with the staging of the first Lagos International Table Tennis Classics, coupled with efforts to revive the fortune of the sport, the TJ’s National Open Championship will debut next week in Ogun State.

The one-week competition sanctioned by the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF) is sponsored by TJ”s Hotel and Suites in Sango Ota, Ogun State with players competing for N1million prize money.

According to the competition manager, Kabir Ajibose, it was the obvious decline in the game that prompted the staging of the competition.  With special attention to U-13 participants, the organisers intend to make the tournament an annual event to complement the efforts being made by the Wahid Oshodi-led NTTF board.

The tournament will serve off on Monday September 16 to 21 at TJ’s Hall in Sango Ota, Ogun State and teams are expected across the country. “There is a noticeable decline in Nigerian table tennis since the turn of the century and this can be attributed to various reasons and prominent among them is lack of regular competition as well as a sound developmental programme that allows for early discovery of talents. We had included the Under-13 (cadet) boys and girls and we believe that with more competition and a catch them young tactics deployed, the future can be bright again.

He added: “Gone were the days when we used to have the Bournvita top 16 Classics and even the Coca Cola International classics as well. Then, we had Nigerian players among the top 50 in the world, but now the story has changed, we are not even number one in Africa again.”

This is a very strong indication that a lot has gone wrong and we thought that something needs to be done very urgently to arrest the downward slide that we seem to have found ourselves. Hence we thought of the idea of a national championship to allow our best hands to compete as well as discover our future super stars,” Ajibose explained.