On March 30, 2022, Beijing time, the WTT Doha Star Challenge continued, and the three players of the national table tennis team Xue Fei, Zhou Qihao and Zhang Rui lost successively, and the national table tennis army was completely destroyed. Obviously, the performance of the second echelon of national table tennis is difficult to be satisfactory, especially the Chinese men's table tennis, Sun Wen, Zhao Zihao, Zhou Qihao, Liu Dingshuo and other Mesozoic players do not have any advantages to speak of, and Liu Guoliang urgently needs to cultivate a new generation of players.
In this Star Challenge, the main players of the national table tennis temporarily withdrew, and the second echelon picked the beams, which is also a good opportunity for us to test the strength of the substitute players. In the previous regular season challenge, young players such as Fan Siqi, Zhang Rui and Yuan Licen performed well, which made us have more expectations for the star challenge.
However, the national table tennis did not participate in the women's doubles and mixed doubles competitions, and the men's doubles were out of the qualifiers, and in the end, they could only compete for the men's singles and women's singles championships. As a result, after the first three match days of competition, only 3 people in the national table tennis advanced to the singles quarterfinals, and it was very difficult to impact the championship.
On this match day, Xue Fei lost 1-3 to Gasina, Zhou Qihao lost 0-3 to Aruna, and the national table tennis was all out of the men's singles field, leaving only Zhang Rui in the women's singles. The 25-year-old Zhang Rui is a very characteristic player, but also the sparring partner of the main players, of course, very strong, she previously won the regular season challenge women's singles runner-up, was high hopes.
In the women's singles 1/4 final, Zhang Rui played against Chen Siyu, and in the first set, Zhang Rui grasped the key points and took the lead 11-9. After that, Zhang Rui suddenly lost his feel, there were many mistakes, he seemed particularly anxious, some moments created opportunities, but accidentally lost, she actually lost three consecutive sets, and the score of these three sets was 4 to 11, the gap was indeed relatively large, surprising.
With Zhang Rui being reversed out and the national table tennis army completely destroyed, the star challenge ended with 0 championships, somewhat helpless. Of course, the national table tennis sent players from the second echelon to participate in this competition, and the opponent's strength was not bad, and such a result was also normal. But through this competition, we have to consider deeper issues.
Zhang Rui, Fan Siqi, Sun Wen, Zhou Qihao, Zhao Zihao, Liu Dingshuo and other people are not young, belong to the Middle Generation players, their competitiveness and the main players gap is very large, which is also a problem that many fans are worried about. At present, the Chinese women's table tennis has completed the replacement of the old and the new, Sun Yingsha, Wang Manyu, Wang Yidi are all young, and the new generation of players such as Ku Man is also worth looking forward to.
In contrast, Chinese men's table tennis is more worrying, except for Fan Zhendong, other young players are not stable, Wang Chuqin has been focused on training, Liang Jingkun and Lin Gaoyuan have not made much progress, and there is no advantage in age. What about the new generation of men's table tennis players? It is difficult to pick a beam for the time being, so Liu Guoliang urgently needs to solve one thing, that is, to accelerate the cultivation of the new generation of players, give the new generation of players more opportunities to participate in high-level competitions, and eliminate the possibility of generation breaking in the bud, so that the national table tennis can continue to maintain competitiveness.
In recent years, Japan and South Korea have given many young players the opportunity to participate in high-level competitions, such as Japan even let Zhang Benmeihe participate in the Star Challenge, although there are pros and cons, but some aspects are worth our deep thinking!