National team struggles in SA tournament
Botswana Table Tennis Association (BTTA) national team endured a difficult time at the Table Tennis Championships held in South Africa over the weekend.
The team comprising two ladies and two men failed to go past the quarter-final stage at the hotly contested Championships.
BTTA Publicity Secretary Arthur Kgaswe told Voice Sport in an interview that they opted to travel with just four players instead of the usual eight after thorough selection criteria.
“We had Constance Kuswani who crashed out at the early stages, Tshepiso Rebatenne, Bakang Maloka and Boago Malobela who all were eliminated at the quarter-finals,” he said.
Kgaswe told Voice Sports that Botswana has always struggled against their South African counterparts.
“We need to work on our confidence so that we become more competitive in international tournaments going forward,” Kgaswe said.
Speaking to Voice Sport on Wednesday Malobela said the tournament’s format was not what they are used to.
“This year’s tourney was completely different because it had few participants, and offered very little if one fail to progress to the last stages,” he said.
Malobela said his target was to at least reach the semi-finals, but struggled with the new playing equipment he was
using.
“It was my first time playing with it and I struggled a lot. I’m however happy to have reached the quarter-finals as it was the first in the history of the tournament,” he said.
“South African players were technically much better than us. We need to be tactically strong in order to beat SA. We are going back to the drawing board and work on rectifying our mistakes,” said Malobela.
