​DOHA, March 8, 2018-Sixteen players qualified for the main draw of the 2018 ITTF World Tour Platinum Qatar Open on Wednesday and will join seeded players.

The main draw of the Men's and Women's Singles begins on Thursday.

In all, the top-16 players gained automatic qualifications based on the new classification system adopted by the International Table Tennis Association (ITFF) for the first time, which is aimed at increasing competition and providing opportunity for the least-rated players to compete with the world champions.

The seeded players include newly-crowned World No. 1 Timo Boll of Germany, China's Fan Zhendong, Japan's John Mizutani, European champions Marcos Freitas, Qatar's Li Peng and Egypt's Omar Assar.

Ping will begin his quest for the title with a clash against Jonathan Groth of Denmark while Zhendong faces Japan's Maharu Yoshimura in the other clash of the day.

For Boll, his first encounter will be against Chinese Taipei's Yin-Ju Lu as Freitas takes on Ukraine's Lei Kou.

In the Men's event, Italy's Mihai Bobocica beat Germany's Ricardo Walther 9-11, 9-11, 11-6, 12-10, 11-9, 6-11, 12-10 to qualify for the main round while Portugal's Tiago Apolonia overcame Japan's Kazuhiro Yoshimura in an equally close duel (11-8, 11-9, 11-9, 2-11, 11-13, 2-11, 11-8).

South Korea's, Jang Woojin ended the hopes of England's Sam Walker (12-10, 7-11, 11-5, 10-12, 11-5, 12-14, 11-6).

Sathiyan Gnanasekaran of India made the final cut while his compatriots Harmeet Desai, Soumyajit Ghosh, and Sanil Shetty fell by the wayside. Gnanaskaran topped his group.

However, later in the day, it was better news for India in the Women's section as Banika Batra beat Canada's Zhang Mo in a gruelling seven-game contest (8-11, 11-8, 11-5, 8-11, 11-2, 13-15, 11-7).

Meanwhile China's Fei Xue emerged champion of the Men's U-21 Singles after defeating Hong Kong's Nam Pak Ng 3-0 (11-8,11-9,11-7) while the women's event was won by another Chinese Rui Zhang who defeated her compatriot Ke Chen 3-1 (11-7,11-4,9-11, 11-7).