On March 22, Beijing time, the International Table Tennis Federation announced the world ranking list for the 12th week of 2022, and its Chinese table tennis world champion Liang Jingkun surpassed Hugo (Brazil) and Zhang Benzhihe (Japan) to the third position in the world by virtue of WTT Oman's victory and Grand Slam promotion to the final four.
But unfortunately, Liang Jingkun's ass is not yet hot, and it is likely that he will give way again: because he has consecutively missed the WTT Doha regular season and star games, and Hugo has already achieved the men's singles quarterfinals of the regular season, so the two of them are expected to exchange positions soon.
Liang Jingkun is the current singles player in the men's national table tennis team second only to Ma Long, Fan Zhendong and Xu Xin, who has won the bronze medal in the World Table Tennis Championships twice, including one of which also eliminated Fan Zhendong (in Budapest in 2019).
However, in recent years, affected by the epidemic and Olympic preparations, Liang Jingkun has not brushed much foreign combat points, so although the ranking has made great progress and has long been among the top ten, it has still been suppressed by Hugo, Zhang Benzhihe and others recently, until he participated in two international competitions this month.
However, according to the latest issue of the list, although Liang Jingkun is already the third in the world, he is only 18 points ahead of Hugo, which is almost negligible, and can only be said to be better than nothing, and can be surpassed casually.
What's worse is that, as mentioned earlier, Hugo has now achieved the quarterfinals of the WTT Doha regular season, so it may add 70 points; and Liang Jingkun did not come to the competition this time, and the points will naturally not change: if the boat does not advance against the current, it will retreat, and if there is no accident, the next ranking Hugo will surpass Liang Jingkun.
In addition, on March 25, the World Table Tennis Federation will also hold the WTT Doha Star Competition, Hugo not only has signed up to participate, but also the number one seeded player, not to say that he will be able to win the championship, at least another top eight is also completely possible, then it is possible to gain 105 points. Liang Jingkun originally registered, but later withdrew from the competition with other main players, so he would not get new points.
But the good news is that Zhang Benzhihe also did not participate in the Doha regular season, nor is he in the list of Doha stars, so it will not exceed Liang Jingkun for the time being: for the national table tennis, it is enough to maintain the top four, as for whether it is third or fourth, it is not a big problem, and it has no impact on the lottery group.
So when will the main player of national table tennis play next? It's still unknown, but let's wait and see!