Team Kenya Table Tennis provisional team of 18 athletes has been confirmed well in time for the 2024 All African Games (AAG) slated for Ghana next month.

The team was selected following successful National Trials featuring young and experienced male and female players as well as junior boys and girls.

A team of 9 ladies and 9 men was confirmed following the conclusion of the senior trials at Kenyatta University and junior trials at Oshwal Sports Complex in Nairobi. According to Kenya table tennis Association (KTTA) Secretary General Fahd Daim, the provisional team will proceed to training in due course.

“As is the requirement of the Sports Ministry, each team must to travel with at least one junior player in both categories of men and women. Our recent senior trials ranked a pool of top 16 players in both men’s and women categories. We settled for the the top 8 to make the team.”

“The closing day of the trials also confirmed the top 8 who make up the provisional team which will be presented to the Sports Ministry to advise on numbers,” expounded Fahd.

Abdul Anab (11)of Nairobi and Sifa Nafula (9) of Kitale were the two juniors who will join their senior counterparts in the men’s and women’s categories.

Lisa Wele of University of Nairobi and Brian Mutua of JKUAT  topped the national team senior trials at KU
Notable absentee in the ladies team was Mary Kinuthia who failed to make it into the last top 8 round robin

St Joseph’s Form Three rising star Emmanuel Wanjala made his debut in the trials and finished fourth in the national rankings.

Wanjala beat Mutua in the opening set of the top 8 round robin matches but the Denmark trained Kenya number one recovered well in time to pull through  by a 3-1 scoreline. Wanjala was the tournament’s dark horse also beating eventual Kenya number two Peter Theuri in Saturday’s Top 16 Round Robin pairings.

“I knew nothing about table tennis by the time I wrote my KCPE exams but started playing the game when I joined Form One at St Joseph,” said Wanjala who schooled at Brookland Preparatory School in Nairobi’s sprawling Kayole slum.

Doreen Juma, now a teacher at her former school (St Monica  Girls School Kitale) made a stunning comeback after a long layoff to rank second in women’s qualifiers.