.. Men’s team out of competition

By Rawle Toney in Birmingham, England
IT WAS a day of mixed results for the country’s table tennis players on the opening day of competition yesterday at the Commonwealth Games.
The women’s side once again reached the quarter-finals of the Team event, while the men’s team, this time around will have an early shift of attention to the singles.

Just like 2018, the women’s table tennis squad will feature in the quarter-finals of the Team competition of the Commonwealth Games, after playing undefeated against Fiji and South Africa.
Though easily brushing aside Fiji, the team of Chelsea Edghill, Priscilla Greaves and Natalie Cummings had a tough time seeing off the women from South Africa.

Greaves and Cummings got the team off to a perfect start when they defeated the pair of Lialaa Edwards and Daniesha Patel in straight sets.
However, Kalam Musfiquh knocked off Greaves 3-0, before Olympian Chelsea Edghill made light work of Patel, in similar fashion to put Guyana up two games to one.

But Musfiquh came back to play Cummings in an entertaining match.
Cummings, looking to seal the deal for Guyana, came out blazing to an 11-7 win in the first set. But in the second set, Musfiquh raced to a 0-8 lead.

Cummings then played some excellent tennis thereafter, to make up for the errors that caused her to be down by a huge deficit. It was not enough. She lost the set in a nail-biting 13-15 result, also losing the following sets 8-11, 8-11.

This brought Greaves back to the table, to face Edwards. She spun her way to a 3-1 win to send the Guyanese women marching forward with only the top-seeded India left to play in their group.
Speaking after the team’s triumph, Edghill, said even though things didn’t go as planned, she thanked Cummings and Greaves for giving them a good start in the day’s final game against South Africa.

According to Edghill, so far, the team accomplished one goal, which was to at least make-it to the quarter-finals.
“It feels really good, knowing that the hard work that we’ve been doing is paying off. We will give it our all against India; it’s a strong team and all we can do is to leave it all on the table. If it’s good enough to win, then, so be it,” the Olympian stated.

But while it has been smooth sailing for the women, the men’s team of Christopher Franklin, Jonathan Van Lange, Shemar Britton, are having a tough time.
The Guyanese men opened against the home side where they were beaten 3-0 by England.

In their second match of the day, it went down to the wire against Bangladesh, but the Tigers had the final say when it ended, winning 3-2 over the Guyanese.
They will play Fiji today in their final Team event.