Top seed Ma Long shocked at TT World Cup

Liverpool (England) - China’s World No.2 Ma Long, bidding for his first singles title at a major international competition, was shocked 0-4 by Chuang Chih-Yuan of Chinese Taipei at the men’s table tennis World Cup here.

Ma, a member of the Chinese men’s Olympic winning team two months ago, was apparently in poor form during the pool match, losing 9-11, 10-12, 7-11, 9-11 to World No. 10 Chuang Friday, Xinhua reports.

Prior to the match, the top seeded Ma had not lost to Chuang since the 2006 Singapore Open when he was only 17 years old. It was also his only second loss in their nine previous world ranking events.

“I did not train well after the Olympic Games,” said a sad Ma. “I played very badly.”

But Ma, who won his first Group A match over Adrian Crisan of Romania, still has a chance of qualifying for the quarterfinals if he beats Englishman Paul Drinkhall in his last match Saturday.

It is Ma’s third time to play in the World Cup. He finished third on previous occasions.

Ma’s fellow Chinese Xu Xin, ranked third in the world, topped Group B after beating Marcos Freitas of Portugal and Vladimir Samsonov of Belarus.

Jiang Tianyi of Hong Kong became the first player to qualify for the last eight from Group C. He upset third seed Timo Boll of Germany and defeated France’s Adrien Mattenet before being awarded a walkover win after South Korea’s Oh Sangeun withdrew due to injury.

Fourth seed Dimitrij Ovtcharov of Germany, the Olympic men’s singles bronze medallist, suffered a surprise exit with shock defeats to Denmark’s Michael Maze and South Korea’s Joo Saehyuk.