OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Hi anyone want to discuss the daft changes the ITTF brought in to table tennis some years ago now. i.m a new member to this forum site but i want to see what other players views on this are. the scoring system. the ball size. the bat colour rule. all these have put a huge amount of people off playing table tennis all over the world thousands and thousands of players just packed in because of it and whole divisions in leagues were lost it wasn.t just the venues. be it at local level or even premier level. i emailed ITTF quite a few times and what arrogant sods they are they never ever reply. these changes should have only been made to pro national level and possibly premier league level and left the amateur and local league level alone. the 11 up is crap games are far too short the up to 21 was far better so why alter it. i know its been in for years and years now but i still hate it. and the ball size made bigger purely for TV reasons. and then the ball material from celluloid to plastic. plastic is crap and makes a big different in how the ball rotates plus they break too easily. and all because the manufacturing process was toxic well isn.t the rubber making process just as toxic ? and has that been changed.? then the bat colour rule came in in the 80s black and red is so boring i used to like the blue. green. orange and other coloured rubbers. yes i know they have started doing a few in green and blue recently but really the bats should be left to be any colour. i.d like your views on these points in this topic. Dave h.

THE HELL.
Environment all in black. The hell is all black likewise, you must know.

God knows what that means mate.

First post in a long time .... great username by the way!

Now time has passed since the rule changes I tend to mostly disagree with you I'm afraid!

The scoring system - I don't know many in the UK that would still advocate 21 up. The games would just be too long, late nights! Focus on every point!

Ball size .... Hmm, I may agree a little here. All that seems to happen though is that with every increase the bats get quicker to compensate. I may feel more strongly if I were out and out defensive though.

Bat colour rule - This I fully support. Absolutely nothing against the "material" players but same colour combo bats are not a level playing field. I welcome the new colours - at first I thought "gimmick" but have just bought some blue V>15 extra!

I also disagree that the new balls break more easily - one piece yes, but the 2-piece abs are really durable in my experience, and the roundness is now very consistent as well (it wasn't in the early days)

In the UK at least the decline in participation started well before much of what you quote and there are other reasons, not least lack of support in the Schools and facilities to bring juniors through.

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This is like stepping back 15 years.. The stuff being complained about were hot subjects back when they were being implemented. And they've been in force for many, many years. The most current change - to the non-cellulose nitrate ball - was comparatively tame. The change to the 40mm ball was far, far, far more contentious. The move to 11 points? I don't remember much discussion about that - apparently most of the on-line table tennis community didn't care all that much - then again there are still people, to this day, who play to 21 points. When I ask them why, they're surprised to learn about it.. apparently no one told them before I did... The two color rule? The only person who really complained about it was s-jan. I thought this was s-jan posting at first, actually, but apparently it's not - all the usual s-jan fingerprints aren't there. They introduced the rule due to plays like Cai Zhenhua who would twiddle and serve and win 50% of the serves because no one could tell what surface he served with. This was at the top levels of International table tennis, too.

For what it's worth, I enjoy the new ball. I find I have much more control over the ball - the older 38mm ball was terrible in terms of being able to hit it where I wanted to. Fragility???? About three years too late - the fragile balls were the old cellulose acetate balls from 3-4 years ago. The new ABS ones (and the seamless polyurethane ones, though they don't seem to be used much any more) are not in the least fragile. Kinda like those truckers driving circles around Washington DC - they're protesting something that's been rescinded over most of the US already.

I must say, though - the person who took the cake for protesting something that took place years and years ago was someone who posted maybe 5-6 years ago. He had bought, sometime in the 1950s, a real Satoh Hiroshi Armstrong Japanese penhold bat, complete with 6mm bare yellow sponge. He hadn't played since then, and was upset to learn that such bats had been outlawed by the 1959 rules. I asked him to post a photo of the bat, he did! A real piece of history, that.

Iskandar

There is one really annoying aspect of the new plastic ball (apart form the main one i.e. less rotation). There is much more variation in playing characteristics (impression of hardness, weight, rotation, slickness?) between different manufacturers.
I read some pros (e.g. Boll) saying they need to know what ball will be played during the tournament/match in advance, so they can train with the same ball a few weeks before.
No way it is normal. Celluloid balls did not differ that much.
Now it is a bit like in tennis, where you need to prepare for clay, grass or hard court. But in table tennis you don’t know what ball will be played (unless you play a high level pro match).
Maybe I exaggerate a bit, but IMHO it just adds unnecessary uncertainty/unpredictability to the game, like there already wasn’t enough at an amateur/club level (poor/good light, grippy/slippery floor, ignorance of tt rules and so on…).

While I agree with you, I think it's pretty standard for tournament players, even at amateur levels, to practice with the same balls used for the tournament. This was the case well before the plastic balls were introduced. The tournament forms used to always state which balls would be used, for this very reason.

You may be right about there being more variation between brands in the plastic era, and I agree it's not ideal.

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Scoring system:
We still play 21 up in handicap cup matches in our league (team and individual). We don't play best of 3 ends, just 2 ends and then total everyone's scores over the whole match, then add the handicap. Team with highest score wins. We used to do handicap matches to 11up and players started the game with their handicap score added to the starting score so someone from a lower division could be 8:0 up before a ball was served. Problem with that was a lucky net, edge and one mistake and the game is over 11:0. Do that over your three matches and you could turn up to only play 18pts. Making them 21 up (still with only 2 serves as the quality of serve is a huge factor in the advantage of better players) and then adding the handicap to a running total has meant for more competitive, even and longer games and every point counts.

So short answer to your question. Depends on the competition format. Shorter game makes you focus more and emphasises the need for good serve, serve returns. Quickest way to improve, improve those aspects of your game.

Ball Size:
There was quite a difference between 38 - 40mm balls. I prefer the 40mm ball because I was never a spin player and as I age, my eyes appreciate a bigger ball to see. The switch from 40 slightly bigger 40mm balls made of plastic, less of a change for me. Where there was a big difference was in the variability of bounce and quality of the earlier plastic balls. Now I switch very easily between old celluloid 1* training balls and newer 3* plastic balls. If you play competitively / at a high level, consistency is important though and what other's have said about practicing before hand with the ball to be used in competition is common which suggests margins are more noticeable the better the player.



Bat Colour rule:
Ask John Hilton. I agree with the switch to two colours. Don't like the move to multiple colours. I've seen the type of lime green colour rubbers on some players bats. Personally I think they look cheap and washed out, maybe due to the "gloss" requirement rules. I'm also intrigued to know how much colour variation affects performance. Orange plastic balls took a long time to develop, much longer than white ones. Car tyres are black for a reason. If I was a seller of equipment I wouldn't be happy, just another variation of stock purchase which I could be left with stuck on my shelves. Was it done to promote the "tv image of the game", to increase demand and generate additional sales? Don't know. For now I'll stick to red and black.

Table tennis always has been first and formost a participation sport rather than a spectator sport. I hope the powers that be don't lose sight of that.

Yes they did. Even back in the days of the 38mm ball you could tell the difference between the TSP and Nittaku 3 star balls. Everything else was.. very different. But pretty much EVERY tournament used the Nittaku balls, so you rarely saw anything else. These days it seems like pretty much all international tournaments (even the last Olympics, which were in Japan) use the DHS or Double Fish ABS balls. The only exception I've heard of was in Australia, where the Butterfly dealer (was it Butterfly? or Nittaku?) "donates" balls to all the local tournaments, forcing all the players to practice with the very expensive Butterfly balls. All the seamless balls seem to have gone by the wayside. The DHS and Double Fish balls are pretty similar - haven't used a Double Fish one in a LONG time, to be honest. We have to use orange (or those bi-color) balls where we play, white balls almost disappear during certain times of the day.

Iskandar

The newly re-designed image of the game. Welcome to Hell !!