My first memories of Table Tennis were in the late forties when I was given a Table Tennis set for Xmas. The large box contained a net and two fixing brackets, two balls and two bats, which, as it was just after the war, had something like sandpaper instead of the pimpled rubber that we get now. The opened out dining room table served pretty well as a “Ping Pong” table being about six feet long and three feet wide. It was under such conditions that I learned to play and love the game of Table Tennis.

When it came to playing on a full size table many years later, the rainy days in the house playing Table Tennis and trying to emulate the great Johnny Leach, held me in good stead as I had learned the art of placing the ball just where I wanted to. On a small table you have to be careful or you keep losing points and matches. The closeness of the walls to the table in the dining room also helped me hone my skills in the art of spinning the ball rather than smashing it around the room.

Working on the assumption that the reader is from Alpha Centauri and has never been to Earth let alone heard of Table Tennis let me explain what it is all about.

The table usually painted in a dark green matt paint, is nine feet long and five feet wide and stands two feet six inches off the deck. It is constructed in such a way that it will fold in half for storage purposes. A quality tabletop is made from very good quality plywood usually ¾ of an inch thick although cheaper models are made from one inch chipboard, and the whole table should be stood on a solid floor and be perfectly level. A sprung floor like a dance floor does affect the bounce of the ball, maybe not to you and me the enthusiastic amateur, but it does to the professionals. I have played Table Tennis on a liner at sea and the moving deck puts a whole new complexion on the game. It is also possible to knock the ice cream off a spectator’s cornet, dumping it in her lap, with a delightful smash that just clips off the edge of the table and flies away.

Around the perimeter of the tabletop there is usually painted a white line about an inch wide and also down the centre. This centre line is for doubles use only. The fine gauge cotton or now nylon net is stretched across the centre of the table between two adjustable brackets so that the height at the centre is six inches. The net is generally a little longer than the table is wide. The white, celluloid balls are 3.5 cms ± 1 mm in diameter and come in five different grades with the five stars or crowns being the best and most expensive. In my humble opinion it is always best to play with the best quality ball. In any case they last longer.

The bats come in a variety of shapes from oval to oblong with heavily rounded corners and these like the tabletop are made from plywood. The handle can be made from anything but it is usually shaped plywood around five inches long and often bound with soft leather. The bats are covered on both sides with anything from a sandpaper like material to pimpled rubber of varying size of pimples to just a plain smooth rubber covering and some will have a firm sponge sandwich between the rubber and wood. Some bats have been known to have a different covering on each side. I favoured the oval bat with the small pimpled rubber surface without any sponge sandwich, as it was light and I like to hear the bat strike the ball. For me a good shot had a distinctive sound whereas a miss-hit sounded different. The sandwich bats hardly made any noise. If memory serves me well there is no restriction to the size of the bat but in general they are all more or less the same size. In any case imagine trying to play with a bat the size of a dinner plate. It would be too unwieldy.

The rules of play are quite complex for the beginner but basically the player serving throws the ball up on the air off the palm of his hand and has to strike the ball so that it bounces once in his own half, goes over the net without touching it and bounces once in the opponent’s half, where it can be struck back by the opponent. However his return must go straight over the net without touching his own half but may touch the net on its way and has to bounce in the server’s half of the table. The server then returns the ball and the rally continues until someone makes a mistake by missing the ball or hitting it into the net so that it does not bounce over or allows the ball to bounce twice in his own half or it doesn’t touch the table in the opponents half or aliens land and say, “take me to your leader.”

The game is played as the best of three or five sets and a set is where one player gets to 21 points with a clear of lead of at least 2 points. Thus 21 – 19 ends a game as does 21 – 15 whereas 21 – 20 does not. In such a case they keep playing until someone has a two points lead. In theory a set could go to 102 –100 or higher but that’s just me daydreaming.

During the play of a set, the serve changes every five points scored between the players. So for instance at 4 –1 the serve changes as it would at 7 – 8 or 19 - 1. That is at any time the total points scored between the players can be divided evenly by five. Thus each player in turn gets five serves. At the end of each set the players change ends and during the final set they also change ends when one player reaches 10 points. The score is called out with the server’s score being called first. As in lawn tennis a score of zero is known as ‘love’. This can prove to be embarrassing to a scorer when I am playing because if I ask what the score is, and he replies, “eight love”, I usually retorted, “thank you dear”.

How you hold the bat and make the shots is something I will leave to the reader to experiment with as they will have fun learning and may actually come up with something new.

I suppose that the best players in the world would be Orang-outangs as they have very long arms, which in Table Tennis is an asset. Fortunately no one has trained such an animal in the Table Tennis art so we humans will remain the champions of the sport. Or at least the Chinese will because with the Koreans they seem to have cornered the winning market.

All through this review I have referred to the player as he or him. I am not being sexist as the fair sex can make equally good Table Tennis players. It has been done purely for literary convenience.

Who is your favorite sports player in this field?

Johnny Leach