No support from the centre, no structure in place, lack of viewership: Are we seeing the end of British table tennis?
The weekend gone by has been a phenomenal one for Andrew Baggaley as he retained his Ping Pong World Championships title at Alexandra Palace to win the competition for a record fourth time. He beat arch-nemesis Alexander Flemming 14-15, 15-8, 14-15, 8-15, 15-14 in the final after being a match point down.
The 36-year-old is a household name for ping pong aficionados and is still England’s leading Commonwealth Games table tennis medal winner with two golds, three silvers, and one bronze to his name.
What separates table tennis from ping pong, even though a majority of the players play both sports, is that ping pong uses traditional sandpaper bats instead of the super-spin inducing rubber ones seen in table tennis, making it a far more challenging sport.
However, table tennis is the sport played at the Olympics, and going into Rio 2020 team Great Britain look no closer to winning their first-ever medal since the in 1988 – when it made its bow at the Games.
Baggaley, who previously represented GB at the Olympics and was also their Bid Ambassador at London 2012, cited personal reasons for his absence from the selection tournaments in the build-up to Tokyo 2020.
After his phenomenal World Championships victory, the Englishman was quizzed about the reasons that have been holding table tennis back in the United Kingdom. Astonishingly, no non-Asian country has won an Olympic men’s singles gold medal since Jan-Ove Waldner’s exploits for Sweden in Barcelona 1992.
In the women’s singles, the margin of domination is even more staggering. Since the 1988 Games, every gold medal winner in that category has come not just from Asia, but from China particularly while no European country has managed to get their hands on a silver or a bronze for 32 long years.
“Table tennis is run by systems and China have the best training structure. In England, you just don’t have it. As a whole the system needs to develop before we can see a change,” said Baggaley.
“The prize money for tournaments is also very poor. Table tennis players don’t win money – they get it from a sponsor or a club. Unlike these tournaments [Ping Pong World Championships] you can win a lot of money but it only happens once a year.”
Due to the lack of finances, he believes younger players also do not consider it as a lucrative sport to take up in comparison to tennis where earnings are based on individual performances per game and tournament and not just for the winners and runners-up.
Speaking about the table tennis culture in the UK, he continued: “Take an average player who has a dream to have a run in a tournament and win massive prize money. But the sport is not like that; if he has a run in a tournament it won’t change his life.
“That’s why the big sports like tennis do so well because they win so much prize money per round. Unfortunately, table tennis lacks behind in that and is very behind in the times.
“At the nationals, there should be rewards for the quarterfinalists, semifinalists, and finalists. This isn’t right, is it?”
Lithuanian player Viktorija Stibyte, who has lived in East London for several years, hit out at the lack of viewership numbers in table tennis leading to the sport being neglected. She believes that people need to be shown more of it to understand its entertainment value.
“People need to be shown table tennis tournaments to see how fun it is. Sky Sports showed the World Championships and suddenly 2000 people came to the stadium to watch the final,” she said.
“The problem here is that sports like football and cricket are the ones that generate TV revenue so the investment in them is far more. And, there is almost no encourage to improve the women’s game. Had I not travelled abroad so frequently, my game would never develop as it has.”
Scottish table tennis star Gavin Rumgay said that the lack of viewership has almost made him lose interest in the sport. Ping pong on the other hand, despite its Olympic absence, is attracting fans and broadcasters alike, and it is something he believes could be the future.
“In the table tennis world tours you’re playing in big and empty halls and you’re asking yourself: ‘What’s the point of all this?’ Big Barry [Hearn] needs to support us for the next 15-20 years and I’m sure the level of this game will go up leaps and bounds,” he said.
He also highlighted the lack of quality table tennis clubs in the UK. He compared the situation to Geneva, where he’s spent most of his pro career and said that the Swiss city had more top clubs and young talent than all the four UK countries combined.
“You look at Geneva, 23 really top clubs. You’d struggle to find even 20 in the entire United Kingdom. And without good funding, that’s not likely to change.”
Two-time Commonwealth Games participant Paul McCreery was also disgruntled about the involvement of the federation and is hardly surprised that team Great Britain have struggled to even get to the quarterfinals of Olympics.
Speaking about the lack of growth in table tennis, the Northern Irishman said: “Table tennis here is like a second activity; a hobby of kinds. So you can’t expect good results at that stage if not too many are taking it seriously even though a select few including me are breaking our sweat every day.
“Everywhere I go is self-funded so tournaments like Ping Pong World Championships help me earn and that’s why I’m focusing my attention on it and off table tennis.”
Table Tennis England and Team GB were given a formal right to reply but they chose not to comment on the allegations made by the players. The only person from Table Tennis England willing to speak to me on the promise of anonymity, is of the opinion that the associations exist merely to prove a point and show that the sport is represented by an official body.
He also said that due to sorry performances on the international stage both in the men’s and women’s side of things, there aren’t people in Table Tennis England willing to take a punt on heavy investments. Thus, youngsters too, aren’t encouraged to take up the sport professionally and are nudged toward badminton and tennis.
With the steep decline in table tennis players at a younger level as well, Olympic qualification, let alone winning medals, looks bleak for Great Britain for the foreseeable future. They’ve already failed in their quest to qualify as a team for Rio 2020, but Liam Pitchford and Paul Drinkhall are trying their best to make it into the singles draw.