OOAK Table Tennis Forum

There is that (and thankfully, not that much of it), the latest iteration being "the plastic ball has ruined the sport". But the part I find very tiresome is the "ITTF is doing a terrible job" and "it's got to be because money is going into Sharara's pocket" part. I definitely don't think everything ITTF does is optimal, or that they're doing a 100% excellent job, or that some behind-the-scenes special interests aren't at work (most of these are probably national interests, or groups of people who think a certain way about how they think the sport is supposed to be progressing) but from the way certain people talk, the whole organization and the people at the top are totally corrupt and everything that is done has to be for their benefit. Table tennis not being as popular as tennis? Yeah, it's Sharara's fault, he's been pocketing money that should have been going into paying ESPN to televise table tennis. Can't get to see the World Champs for free on TV? Yeah, that's ITTF's fault for not being smart enough to negotiate with Murdoch. And on and on. It's like one of those echo chambers you keep reading about if you follow US politics - it's GOT to be true if enough people repeat it, so it IS true.

Iskandar

Just know that those suspicions are not without some justification.

There was a major conflict of interest in Sharara separately running TMS, which had television rights for ITTF events. He also ran it out of a property he owned in Canada. Major conflicts of interest. Around the time decisions on 40+ balls were being made, it was revealed that a major person on the ITTF equipment committee is married to a person who held a patent on seamless ball technology. If you search on OOAK you can find a lot of that documented, there were long threads on that and other things concerning Sharara's dodginess around 2013 and 2014. That along with the many truth-challenged statements he made about things like balls, boosters, celluloid, TMS, etc. etc. put him into very low repute among most players. I can't even recall all of it just now since it is pretty old news. At the time it was simply appalling, to me anyway. It was clearly FIFA-lite.

Weikert is in the process of purging pretty much anyone who had much to do with Sharara and has now explicitly called out his sleaziness (as did the guy who ran against Sharara for ITTF president in 2014). Some of the threads here from MNNB document the purge.

Sharara was a sleazebag. He damaged the credibility of the ITTF, and you may need to give it some time to recover. We will see if it is going to be better.

One thing for sure is that the banning of speed glue and boosters led to a marked increase in price of rubbers for players. People have reacted to that by making --- hypotheses -- that this was a feature, not a bug. Here again, we need to come back to Sharara, who claimed that the booster ban was for the "health of the players". Baby oil for example. And yet, manufacturers put boosters into some rubbers. Again, this is not a good look if you are trying to convince people there was no quid pro quo.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH