KUWAIT: Kuwait International Table Tennis Tournament (Salwa Cup) will witness the strongest competition today at the late Khalid Yousuf Khalid Al-Marzouq Hall in Salwa Sports Club. Top world-ranked players will compete in their first matches in round 32. The competition will be hard and exciting with the return of China's Ma Long who won the previous Salwa Cup. Former champion Vladimir Samsonov (from Belarus) will also be competing today.

On the list of today's features are; Stefan Fegerl, Sansoli, Juin, Koki Niwa, Xin Xu, Andre Kagina, Ting Xin, Dimitrij Ovtchqrov, Chih-Yuan Chuang, Youngsik Jung, Zhendong Fan and Kuwait's Salem Al-Hassan. In the women's individual matches World No 1 Shiwen Liu, Hyowon Sco, Jihee Jeon, Jiago Li, Kasumi Ishikawa, I-Ching Cheng, Ai Fukuhara, Yuling Zhu, Petrissa Solja, Yana Tie and Tianwei Feng will compete.

Meanwhile, Kuwait National Team Coach Dakhil Al-Habsi said the aim is to raise the level of players, adding that the performance of players Marzouq Al-Rashidi and Abdallah Al-Bahrani is good compared so far. Al-Habsi said the competition is one of the strongest technically. He wished that Kuwait player Salem Al-Hassan makes it to round 16 - and be closer to a good result.

Salwa Cup kicked off on Wednesday under the patronage of HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber - with the U21 category for both men and women. Kuwait's Marzouq Al-Rashidi lost to Hong Kong's Siu Hang Lam 3-1, to become the first Kuwaiti player to play in the tournament, while another Kuwaiti player Abdallah Al-Bahrani lost to Thailand's Padasak Tonviriyavechakul 3-0.

In the women's U21 competition's results; Kuwait's Shahad Al-Enezi lost to Japan's Saki Chipata 3-0, while Thai's Paranan defeated Lebanon's Malak Khouri. In the men's category; Chao Hong Son defeated Saudi Arabia's Abdelaziz Bushalahi 3-0, while Egypt's Shadi Majdi defeated Japan's Tionin Riozaki 3-2. Jordan's Khalid Khudair lost to Thailand's Yi Yanso while Lebanon's Mohammad Hami lost to Kazakh player Kiril Jersiminko 0-3.

By Abdellatiff Sharaa