UAE table tennis team live up to medal promise

Doha: The UAE table tennis players still nurse hopes of adding to the bronze medal they won in the team event at the 12th Arab Games.

The UAE, as expected, went down to Egypt in their semi-final. The UAE's Rashid Abdul Hamid lost to Ahmad Saleh 3-1( 11-4, 8-11, 4-11, 1-11), Jasem Al Linjawi fell to Al Sayed Lashin 3-0 (7-11, 2-11, 7-11) and Rashid Hassan ran Emad Al Sayed close before losing 3-0 (7-11, 7-11, 10-12) as a battling UAE settled for the bronze medal together with Lebanon, who lost to Saudi Arabia 3-0 in the other semi-final clash.

Superior opposition

"We were planning to win a medal from our participation in these Games and we have achieved our objective; if it wasn't for the Egyptian team with their top class players, we could have won at least a silver," Ebrahim Al Assam, the team's manager, told Gulf News yesterday.

"Egypt are the strongest team in the Arab [countries] and Africa led by Al Sayed Lashin, the African champion, and Ahmad Saleh who plays as a professional in Turkey. But, on the whole, it is good to end as one of the top four teams in the Games.

"Table tennis was not actually slated for the Arab Games according to the criteria of the UAE NOC but we met with the officials of the NOC and convinced them that our team will at least win a medal and we have already fulfilled that promise. We still have a chance to win more medals in the singles and doubles although in the latter, we could still face Egypt in the quarter-finals," Al Assam said.

Limited exposure

"The problem of the UAE table tennis players is that their preparation has not been regular and they only prepare when they are going to take part in a regional or continental competitions and they also do not take part in international friendly tournaments which will help lift their standards because this calls for money and the UAE TT Association does not have the financial resources for that," Al Assam, who played in the 1985 Arab Games in Morocco and the Asian Games in India and South Korea during the 80's, rued.