The Jamaican men’s team put up a hard fight but went down 3-0 to number seven seeds Germany on their debut outing yesterday at the 2017 World Men’s Team Championships currently under way in Marseilles, France.

National number three player Bruce Burrowes kicked off play for Jamaica but suffered an 11-5, 11-1, 11-8 defeat at the hands of Valentin Rapp. Experienced pro player Lewis Walters, who followed on, couldn’t quite hold off world number 41 Raphael Kandra and went down 12-10, 11-3, 7-11, 11-6.

Then Jamaica’s Caribbean number one Chris Binnie battled world number 12 Simon Rosner for 45 minutes, but Rosner prevailed 11-7, 12-14, 11-2, 11-9.

“We knew it would be a tough battle against Germany because they’re a top-10 ranked side, but our boys played tremendously and delivered a strong performance on their first outing at this elite level,” said Team Manager Douglas Beckford.

The team will have the day off today to regroup and get ready to take on Scotland tomorrow.

“Our focus now is the next set of matches, so we’ll assess what went wrong and make the necessary changes to be ready for Scotland,” he added.

Depending on the outcome of the first round, Jamaica will either move to the knockout stage of the Championships with the top 16 teams or do battle for positions 17-24.

The tournament will run until December 3.