Sun has not yet set on veteran Ni's career at the table

At 51, most wives have settled down to a life which includes decorating the house, gardening and traveling with the family on holidays.

However, that is not the case for Ni Xialian who, with a little more good fortune at the ping-pong table, could be enjoying life even more as the oldest female player, who represented Luxembourg, at the World Table Tennis Championships in Suzhou.

Beginning her career in the 1970s in Shanghai, long before most of the competitors in Suzhou were born, Ni's game is not as sharp as it used to be in the 1980s when she was a member of China's title-winning squad and the mixed doubles champion at the 1983 Tokyo worlds.