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Aruna Quadri yesterday continued his unbeaten run in the knockout stage of the preliminary round of the ITTF World Tour, tagged Swedish Open, beating Hong Kong’s Kit Kwan Ho 4-2 to qualify into the main draw of the men’s singles.
Just as he said after his preliminary round exit at the German Open last week, Quadri fought his way into the last 32 with a convincing 4-2 victory over his left-handed opponent.
From the start of the encounter, the Asian star was full of confidence hoping to use Quadri to improve his ranking, but he met a stronger opponent in the Nigerian from the start.
When the match was at 2-2, the Asian needed only a point at 10-8 to take a 3-2 lead, but Quadri fought back to force the game into deuce. Even when it was almost clear that the Hong Kong star was cruising to victory, Quadri restored parity. When it was 13-13, Quadri dazzled his opponent with two powerful forehand shots to win the game at 15-13 to take a 3-2 lead.
The sixth game was from the beginning in favour of Quadri who led from the start to put the game beyond his opponent. The Nigerian finally completed the rout with an 11-4 win to make it 4-2.
Quadri will team up with the 16 seeded players in the main draw, which serves off today.
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