Chesterfield ace Liam Pitchford leads full-strength England at table tennis world cup

Liam Pitchford leads a full-strength England team for the ZEN-NOH ITTF Team World Cup, aiming to match their bronze medal performance when the event was held in London last year.
Chesterfield table tennis star Liam Pitchford (Pic: Paul Sanwell)Chesterfield table tennis star Liam Pitchford (Pic: Paul Sanwell)
Chesterfield table tennis star Liam Pitchford (Pic: Paul Sanwell)

The Chesterfield athlete will compete alongside Paul Drinkhall, Sam Walker and Tom Jarvis at the event in Tokyo from November 6 to 10.

The competition is the test event for the Olympic table tennis tournament and will be in the same venue as will be used in 2020, the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium.

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England will be hoping to match their brilliant performance on home soil in last year’s competition, when, backed by a vocal crowd at the Copper Box Arena on London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, they clinched bronze medals.

They were beaten in the semi-finals by Japan, who went on to be defeated in the final by China – who won both men’s and women’s competitions in London.

China will again be overwhelming favourites, but England, who qualified thanks to their quarter-final finish at the 2018 World Team Championships, have beaten many of the other competing nations in recent years.

The full line-up of qualifying nations is: China (Asia champions), Nigeria (Africa champions), Germany (Europe champions), Brazil (Pan Am champions), Australia (Oceania champions), Japan (hosts), USA (Pan Am runners-up), plus the World team Championship qualifiers South Korea, Sweden, England, Austria and Chinese Taipei.

The team qualifying tournament for the 2020 Olympics takes place in January.