In the 2020 Oman Challenge, due to the tight schedule, the masters have been absent, so that the Japanese second-tier stars Hitomi Sato and Miyu Kato became the brightest new stars in this game, because Hitomi Sato is the strongest chipper in Japan, extremely good at defense, prefer to wear down the will of the opponent through hard battles, so as to achieve the purpose of finally winning.
Interestingly, this battle, she faced the opponent is also Kato Miyu with the main style of playing with the ball, the confrontation of the two defensive players cast this historic duel, the first set of the two sides began a fierce confrontation, the two multi-shot each other, each shot was painstaking, cost a lot of energy, the two sides were deadlocked all the way, the score alternately rose, Hitomi Sato once briefly led 7:5, took the lead at 10:9, but she did not seize the opportunity to be forced to be flattened by the opponent, the two from 10 : 10 draws began to enter a tug-of-war of life and death, and after a difficult battle, Miyu Kato took the next city 16:14.
The situation of the two in the second set has hardly changed much, from 5:5 draw to 7:7 draw, and then to 8:8 draw, tired two people gasping for breath, after a hard battle, Kato Miyu won the set 14:12, in the third set Kato Miyu won a 5:1 lead, I thought he would win another set, as soon as possible to lock in the victory, but did not expect the experienced Hitomi Sato to complete the reversal, the two sides 8:8 draw 10:10 draw back to the same starting line.
After a two-minute long fight, Miyu Kato was tired and bent over, but unfortunately he did not seize the opportunity in the good situation of 15:14, but was reversed by the opponent's three-point reversal, Hitomi Sato won back a city at 17:15, and in the fourth set, Miyu Kato once again led 8:6, but she made frequent mistakes in the handling of key balls, and she was actually won by the opponent to take the first set point by scoring four consecutive points to 10:8, and she was reversed by the opponent in this round with a 9:11 loss.
Miyu Kato is young and aggressive, but in the face of the complex situation is still a little anxious, after continuous mistakes, he began to be impatient, lost the rhythm he should have, but Hitomi Sato played steadily, and then won two more sets at 11:8 and 11:9, winning four consecutive sets in the whole game, winning the opponent with a big score of 4:2, and the length of the game in 98 minutes, creating the longest time record in modern table tennis.
Prior to this match, the longest ITTF record appeared in 2017, when Austrian Open veteran Ni Xialian defeated 19-year-old Japanese chipper Hashimoto Fan Naoka in an hour, 33 minutes and 42 seconds, and the second place was Hitomi Sato, who spent an hour and 30 minutes in the 2017 Qatar Open against Li Jie, and when any sport rises to the historical level, it will be a wonderful game, maybe Hitomi Sato and Miyu Kato are not the strongest first-line superstars. But this record-breaking style of play can still attract a lot of people's attention and love for table tennis.