Miu Hirano, who won women's singles title for Japan at the Table Tennis World Cup in 2016, decided to quit the upcoming ITTF World Tour Grand Finals because of lower back pain, announced her management company on Tuesday. Earlier in September, Hirano withdrew from the All-Star competition in Japan for the same reason.

Miyu Kato will take Hirano's position in the Japanese national team for the year-end event that will take place in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province between November 19 and 22. Kato's teammates included Mima Ito, Kasumi Ishikawa and Hitomi Sato. Kato participated in the World Table Tennis Championships last year. She started to draw more attention after defeating Ito and China's Chen Meng at ITTF's T2 Diamond League this July.

Ito, who currently ranks second in the world, has confirmed she will attend the Finals. Having missed formal matches for eight months, the Japanese ace was eager to find out what she can do now.

World's top 16 ranking players were invited to this year's finals but each federation can send no more than four players to men's and women's competitions. China's Fan Zhendong, Xu Xin, Ma Long and Lin Gaoyuan were qualified for men's matches while Chen Meng, Sun Yingsha, Wang Manyu and Liu Shiwen were qualified for women's. Liu is still recovering from right elbow surgery so she will be replaced by Wang Yidi.

Fan and Chen pocketed men's and women's singles titles for China at the finals last year.

ITTF will throw the World Cup first before the finals. Men's World Cup will take place in Weihai of east China's Shandong Province between November 13 and 15; Woman's World Cup will happen in the same city between November 8 and 10. Chen, Sun, Fan and Ma will attend the world cups for China.