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❖ Back in 1986, Japanese masters of small rackets came to Moscow to play a friendly match with the USSR national team. The whole umpire's crew was formed of the Soviets. As is usual before the game, the judge examined a Japanese player instrument, a typical Japanese paddle, and suddenly the judge frowned. And he saied in icy voice
- There is illegal rubber here, you can't play.
Naturally, the beginning of the match was delayed, agitated debates sparked. The Japanese delegation got nervous, waving their hands and kicking some colorful booklets to the judge's face. In short, there was a prolonged turmoil there, that Soviet viewers could not see, because Soviet TV pre-censored the show, and watching the night TV programme we all enjoyed powerful performance of Soviet players, who destroyed Japanese team badly.

Subsequently, from friendly conversations with ITTF experts, it developed that some of the Japanese players had a Butterfly PECULAR® rubber on the racket's rear side, which is not intended for play; but the Soviet judge did not know this, and he employed a reasonable argument that if there are both an ITTF logo and pimples, then this is a playing material. Seeing the pips are non-standard size and shape, he deemed the rubber is an illegal product.
The Soviet judge is not to blame, the Japanese manufactarurer is to, for making products with confusing exterior.
In the view of the Moscow unseemly accident, ITTF afterwards BANNED the use of its logo if the rubber not intended for play or non-standard design.
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Written by Igor Novick© , for SovietSport.ru blog exclusively.
Original article in Russian.

Fascinating!

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This pretty much explains Igor's view of the world...

Iskandar

Nice story, very entertaining - I love it. And good work with your image processing program.

Sadly ...the Butterfly logo was different. With some little more attention to details, your stories would become great.

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- style: modern defense -

A very peculiar rubber indeed

You see, Igor's hero in the story is the ornery umpire who decided the folks from Japan couldn't play even though the rubber had an ITTF logo on it, just because he thought the pips looked funny. Igor's wet dream is to be in the same situation, to be able to ban people from playing when he sees something he THINKS is against his personal code for equipment. 2mm thick side tape? H3 that he THINKS has been boosted, because he thinks the pips stick up too much? Or maybe he THINKS you've used some sort of illegal glue? No matter that the bat's gone through Racket Control, if he's the umpire at the table he's going to BAN YOU FROM PLAYING. That's his dream. I'd stay away from his tournaments, and people in charge of tournaments should NEVER make him an official, with this sort of attitude. Luckily he's in Russia, and few of us would ever be anywhere close to any tournament he's involved with.

Iskandar

IMO Igor is not a qualified judge, nor an active player. He is just a writer of short stories.