Croydon’s Nicholas Lum is officially a world number one! The young Team Vic star has flown up the ITTF World Rankings alongside a number of Victorian players who improved their position amongst the world’s best, following the Australian domination at the 2022 Eastland ITTF-Oceania Senior and Youth Championships last week.

(Photo APAC Sports Media)

Lum now sits atop the U/17 Boys’ World Rankings, sits 5^th in the world in the U/19 Boys’ and is ranked 42^nd in the Men’s. He is the first able-bodied Australian and Oceania player to reach the top of the ITTF World Rankings in any age group.

Table Tennis Victoria is immensely proud of all of Nic’s achievements and to become the first Australian player in history to reach the top of the World Rankings is a credit to himself, his coaches, club, family and everyone involved in his table tennis career so far. Which we may forget is just getting started with Nic not turning 18 until the end of the year.

Nic’s last few years have been brilliant, he has played some of his best table tennis, achieved his highest rankings and debuted in his first Commonwealth Games.

At the National Championships this year, Nic brought home 11 medals including 9 gold, 1 silver and a bronze. He also won the Best Player Award in the Open and U/21 Men’s as well as the U/17 Boy’s. To cap off his great week he was awarded the Australian Junior Player of the Year for the third year in a row.

Nic has taken huge leaps forward in recent years to become one of Australia’s top talents. In 2019, he won the men’s cadet singles title at the Janos Molnar Tournament in Hungary, his first international tournament victory and the first by a non-European player. He was selected to go to the World Table Tennis Championships in 2020 before they were cancelled and in 2021, he reached the last 16 at the World Youth Championships.

2021 was perhaps Nic’s best year to date, he won gold in the U/17 Boy’s Singles at the 2021 World Table Tennis Youth Contender Italy event, silver in U/17 Boys Singles in Hungary, gold in the U/17 Boy’s Singles and bronze in U/19 Boy’s Singles in Slovak Republic.

Other Victorians who saw their ranking improve after their phenomenal performances last week were Xavier Dixon (92^nd Men’s), Jian Fang Lay (80^th in Women’s), Finn Luu (38^th U/19 Boys’ & 139^TH Men’s), Milly Tapper (163^rd Women’s) and Connie Psihogios (22^nd U/15 Girl’s).