By Neha Aggarwal
Both the international celebs join the star-studded roster of global players in the first ever time limited format of the game to be played at the T2 APAC League to be held in the month of June this year.
The presence of Chuang Chih-Yuan, aka “Chuany” grows the profile of the T2 APAC as he joins World No. 4, Jun Mizutani from Japan, World No. 8 Belarus’ Vladimir Samsonov, World No.12 Timo Boll from Germany and legendary defensive player Joo Saekyuk of Korea Republic.
The other player from Chinese Taipei is women’s World No.5 Cheng-I-Ching. Sharing his thoughts on his participation, Chuany said:
“I am delighted with the opportunity to compete with so many great players, and the quality is truly top-class with so many different styles and specialists. What is great for me personally is to have two world top-10 players from Chinese Taipei in this event, which goes to show how competitive our country is in the sport. I am excited about the new 24-minute match format, and I believe it will bring out even better performances from all of the players.”
Runner-up at the 2016 ITTF World Tour Swedish Open, Mattias Karlsson is currently ranked no.24 in the world and is the other player to join the upcoming league. He will join his teammate and mixed doubles partner Matilda Ekholm who has been in incredible form being the runner up in singles and winner in doubles at the Seamaster 2017 India Open. Together they recently clinched the gold at the Swedish National Championships earlier this month, and Mattias also added a bronze medal in the same tournament partnering Kristian Karlsson in the men’s doubles category.
“This is a great opportunity to raise the profile of table tennis and I can’t wait to compete in this ground-breaking event. The action promises to be exciting, which will add more intensity and drama to viewers and fans.”- Mattias Karlsson.
The T2 APAC Table Tennis League runs on a 24 minute format. In each match, players must try to win as many games as possible within the assigned 24 minutes. All players will play in separate but concurrent singles and mixed-team championships in a league format.
The players will go through a draft selection process which will be selected by Team Captains.
To know more about the league, visit www.t2apac.com.
As mentioned at www.t2apac.com.