The 2024 season of the Aba Premier League Table Tennis tournament, organised by the Aba Premier League Table Tennis Group, will start today, Sunday, March 3, 2024 with the Guvnor’s Crown.
The Guvnor’s Crown is a pre-league event that brings the winner of the Aba Premier League Table Tennis tournament to compete with the winner of the Aba Premier League Table Tennis Super-4, to determine the overall winner of the concluded season.
The Guvnor’s Crown is the first event in the table tennis calendar of the Abia State Table Tennis Association and held at the beginning of the table tennis season.
This year’s Guvnor’s Crown, which will be played at the Abayi Girls Secondary School sports arena, will be between Emmanuel Okoronkwo, winner of the 2023 Aba Premier League Table Tennis Super-4 tournament and Uzoma Onwubuchi, who won the 2023 Aba Premier League Table Tennis tournament.
Briefing newsmen on the league schedule for 2024, Dike Dimiri, chairman, Abia State Table Tennis Association, said that192 matches will be played in the year, while the player with the highest number of points wins the league.
He said that the Aba Premier League Table Tennis tournament is an annual table tennis league, where players compete for points and prize money, during the league season.
He explained further that players are either promoted from division-one to the premier league or demoted from the premier league to division-one, depending on the position in which they finish on the league table at the end of each season.
According to him, at the end of the Aba Premier League Table Tennis season, the top four players on the table compete for the Aba Premier League Table Tennis Super-4 for that season.
“What we’ve done in the calendar is to arrange the matches by number. So, every match has a number and so there are 192 matches to be played in 2024. Each player will player another player three times and at the end, we will know who the league winner is.
“Also, looking at the calendar, we are kicking off with the Guvnor’s Crown. During the 2023 season, we had two tournaments, the Aba Premier League Table Tennis and the Super-4 tournament. Both tournaments produced winners and we want to use the Guvnor’s Cup to determine the overall winner of the year,” he said.
Table tennis has been an Olympic sport since 1988 and is one of the most viewed sports in the world, watched by hundreds of millions of people on an annual basis.
The Aba Table Tennis League, aims to attract the best Table Tennis players in the South-East, South-South regions and other parts of the country.
