In less than one week, the best players from 15 African countries will converge on Lagos for the 2019 ITTF Africa Cup, which serves off on August 3 at the Molade Okoya-Thomas Hall of Teslim Balogun Stadium.
Nigeria’s Aruna Quadri and Egypt’s Dina Meshref are defending champions of the tournament and they were expected to battle against other players for their places in the 2019 ITTF World Cups.
Aside host – Nigeria, countries expected in Lagos for the championship included Algeria, Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Congo DRC, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Togo and Tunisia.
Also, since establishing himself as Algeria’s best male player, Sami Kherouf had been making efforts to halt the dominance of Aruna Quadri and Egypt’s Omar Assar (EGY) in Africa. But all his efforts had not materialised.
Again, the Algerian star would be heading to Lagos, in his bid to fulfill his dream of becoming the first Algerian to conquer the continent.
As a realist, Sami Kherouf admitted that it would take an extra-ordinary performance to rule the continent.
“At present, we are training together as team in Algiers, with the aim of using the Africa Cup in Lagos as a good preparation for the All African Games,” he said.
On the possibility of dethroning the defending champion – Aruna Quadri, he said: “To win the title is super hard with the presence of the best African players like Omar Assar and Aruna Quadri, as well as other good players too.