Liam Pitchford has been drawn against the USA’s Kanak Jha and Chuang Chih-Yuan of Chinese Taipei in the group stage of the Men’s World Cup.

World No 15 Pitchford, the 10th seed at the event in Weihai, is the top-ranked player in Group B. He will start against World No 30 Chuang at 3am UK time on Friday, following up with the match against Jha (WR 27) at 6am.

A top-two group finish is needed to join the top eight seeds in the knockout stage.

Pitchford has two wins and one defeat in previous meetings with Chuang, beating him 3-0 at the World Team Championships in 2018 and 4-0 in the quarter-finals of the Qatar Open in March, where Pitchford reached the final in the last tournament before the pandemic. His defeat was a narrow 4-3 reverse at the 2019 Bulgarian Open.

Pitchford has met Jha once before, beating him 4-1 in the last 32 at the 2018 Swedish Open, but knows him well as Jha has often sparred with members of the England squad.

The England No 1 said: “They are both great players, so it’s going to be tough, but I know them well and will go out and give it my best shot.”

Both of Liam’s matches are on table 1 and will be shown live on the ITTF’s itTV channel.

Matches at the event are also being shown on Eurosport and on FreeSports in the UK and Ireland.

Eurosport is showing live action between 3am and 5.30am on Friday and again from 9am.

Coverage on FreeSports starts at 11am UK time on Friday, giving audiences the chance to catch up on the matches held overnight. The channel is No 64 on Freeview, 422 on Sky, 553 on Virgin Media, and 64 on both TalkTalk TV and BT TV.