The Zimbabwe junior table tennis team will face off against the local Chinese community in the Ambassadors Cup in July as part of preparations for future international tournaments.

Zimbabwe Table Tennis Union president John Muringani said they will use the Under-18 and Under-21 players in the Ambassadors Cup to gauge their progress.

“We are playing the Chinese at end of July, and will be looking to hold the tournament at the University of Zimbabwe.

“The event will be screened on CCTV” he said.

“We have a good relationship with the local Chinese community and playing their team will give our players some much needed experience.

“We will field our under 18s and 21s because these are our future national team players and more importantly it will be a good test for them.

“We have been working with this group for four years and we want to check how they have improved,” said Muringani.

The ZTTU president also hailed their Team Building Project which aims to groom national team players and prepare them to challenge for honors at international events.

“I said it before that we are tired of going to tournaments to compete, we need to challenge hence we came up with the team building project in 2012.

“We added 10 more players after the Zimbabwe Closed Championship last week.

“When we started it in 2012, we had 45 players but now we have over 80 players.

“This means we need more coaches to help the four we currently have,” he said.

He added that; “This project has helped us monitor our players and we are seeing positive results for example we have Tinotenda Fambira in the U13 boys category who has been a champion since he was under- nine up to now where he is U13”.

“He was also part of the seven players who were in Botswana for the Hopes camp last year.

“This is basically an International Table Tennis Federation organized one- week camp for U12 players in Africa.

Muringani was pleased by the turn out at the Zimbabwe Closed Championship.

“We had more than 100 players taking part and the level of competition is improving.”