Maria to represent England at the World Cup

Maria has been selected for the ITTF Team World Cup at the Copper Box Arena which is from February 22-25, 2018.
England has been drawn against Hong Kong and Singapore.

The official Table Tennis England Announcement and as reported by the local paper Reading Chronicle.

British Universities Champion

This weekend the BUCS ( British Universities and Colleges Sport) individual championships took place hosted by Nottingham University. On home soil Maria won the singles versus Beth Roberts and the mixed doubles, partnered with Daniel Reed. She also won silver for the womens doubles with her partner Yolanda King, losing 2-3, 9-11 on the fifth. The University Tble Tennis club had a successful entry since they won 9 medals in total (4 golds, 3 silvers and 2 bronze).
Full results can be found here

Statistics

Type	Played	Matches						Games				Points				Walkovers
Single	8	8	-			0	100.0%	24	-	3	88.9%	285	-	155	64.8%	0
Double	11	10	-			1	90.9%	32	-	4	88.9%	385	-	228	62.8%	0
Total	19	18	-			1	94.7%	56	-	7	88.9%	670	-	383	63.6%	0

Spanish Open: First Day

Maria's task at the first day of the Spanish Open it was always going to be difficult since she was facing opponents higher ranked than her. The first game was versus Selena Selvakumar of India (ranked 310) for the Under21s with Maria winning. The full video is available at the ITTF web pages. Unfortunately despite a good start against Xuan Zhang of Spain (ranked 223) again for the Womens Under 21 with a 11-6 first set she lost 3-1 (11-6 6-11 9-11 2-11). The third set was the deciding one with Maria 9-7 up and serving unfortunately the serves did not serve their purpose. This game is also available at ittf.com.

For the Womens Singles Maria lost both games to Yousra Helmy of Egypt (r 317) with a 2-4 score and Stephanie Loeuillette of France (r 132) with a 0-4 score.

Next day to come is Womens Doubles with Lois Peake being her partner.

British League: The Second Weekend

Maria, recently arriving back from Poland, joined the Kingfisher team for the second weekend of the British League (7-8 October). This took place at Nottingham and Maria won 5 out of 8 matches helping the team to be currently joint second. The team consistent of Marcus Giles, Dan Basterfield, Jamie Liu and
Reece Chamdal.

Maria's results were:

Opponent		Team	Date	Score	Result
Patricia Ianau		London Academy I	07/10/2017	11-9 11-7 11-9	Win
Gabriel Achampong		London Academy I	07/10/2017	10-12 9-11 11-9 11-6 9-11	Loss
Israel Awolaja		Wymondham	07/10/2017	11-6 8-11 11-8 3-11 8-11	Loss
Omar Khassal		Wymondham	07/10/2017	11-8 11-5 8-11 7-11 11-3	Win
Joe Killoran		Halton I	08/10/2017	11-5 11-4 11-5	Win
Amirul Hussain		Halton I	08/10/2017	11-7 8-11 11-13 11-5 11-7	Win
Keir Morton		Drumchapel Glasgow II	08/10/2017	11-6 8-11 11-7 9-11 10-12	Loss
Sepehr Bidari		Drumchapel Glasgow II	08/10/2017	10-12 8-11 11-7 11-9 11-6	Win

Source: British League

Polish Open

Between the 4th of October and the 8th of October Maria participated at the Polish Open taking place at Czestochowa.

For the Under 21s Maria (423 ranked)  had to face Filippa Bergand (Sweden, 381 ranked) and Angelika Janik (Poland, 801 ranked) for the group stage. Maria had a 3-1 win over Angelika (7 -9 6 4) and 3-2 win over Filippa (7 -8 9 -5 9). At the round of 64 though she lost to Yuan Wan (Germany, 185 ranked) 3-0 (-8 -5 -8).

Maria was eliminated at the group stage after a win versus Natalia Grigelova (Slovakia, 524 raked) with a 4-1 score (5, 6, 7, -9, 5) and a loss to Pauline Chasselin (France, 189 ranked) with a 4-1 score (-8 -8 -7 7 -6).

As for doubles the usually successful team of Maria and Tin Tin failed at the first hurdle to the Czech duo of STRBIKOVA Renata and TOMANOVSKA Katerina (-6 -9 -5)

Croatia camp

Training hard at Croatia twelve days before the world university games in Taiwan

A small video of the training

British League - Final Weekend

The Kingfisher team of Dave Barr, Marcus Giles, Daniel Basterfield, Hari Gehlot and Maria participated at BATTS for the final weekend of the Championship Division of the British League.
The team played three games:

• vs Cippenham. Won 7-1 with Maria having two wins against Robert Hansell (11-7 11-6 11-7)and Martin Gray (11-8 11-7 11-5) 
• vs Wymondham. Won 6-2 with Maria having two wins against Ian Mclean (12-10 8-11 11-4 12-10) and Ryan Collins (11-6 11-5 9-11 11-6)
• vs Nottingham Sycamore 1. Lost 5-2 with Maria winning against Shaquille Webb-Dixon (11-6 11-9 11-8) and losing to Ismaila Akindiya (6-11 7-11 11-6 2-11)

 Overall Maria played 20 games with a winning rate of 55%. Full Maria's results can be seen here and the team finished 5th overall.