The World Team Championships are underway and we've been competing for the past two days and I must say things have taken a turn for the worse. There are certain standards that a World Championships should not drop below and unfortunately the Russian organisers have let themselves down. All the competitors are staying at a 3 star hotel. The rooms are very simple and rustic but that is fine as you really only need a place to put your head down each night. We all eat in the buffet style hotel restaurant. I wouldn’t say I’m picky with food – if you’ve seen me at a tournament it will usually be munching on a big container of cold spaghetti bolognese. The food we have to force down each meal is close to inedible and we have the same 3 or 4 choices every time. Dinner is an exact replica of lunch, just a few hours older. To top it off, most of the men’s team has come down with stomach problems compliments of the dining hall.

The hall is excellent. Good tables, floor, balls and lighting. The lighting can be an issue at these events as it is always extremely bright and you often get blinded every time you throw the ball up to serve. However they are arranged so there is very little impact on the players. There’s a draught that causes some windy conditions on a couple of table but that often happens in these massive halls. There have been a few hiccups like the lights being off and the ventilation system on full (strong enough to blow down many of the court barriers!!) this morning when we turned up to practice before our match but it’s been mostly good.

We’ve had a pretty good start with our competition. We’ve beaten Sri Lanka, South Africa and Saudi Arabia 3-1, 3-1, 3-1 in our first three matches. This is the first time I’ve been playing in division 3 and I can say there is a lot of depth in world table tennis these days. Long gone are the days where you could cruise through matches against some of the lower ranked countries.

Sri Lanka has been the weakest of our opponents so far. They play open blocking and countering-hitting games similar to neighbouring countries like India and Pakistan. I quite like playing this sort of style as it gives me more time to get the upper hand in the important backhand to backhand diagonal. A block/punch is easier to play against than a topspin. They have a promising young kid who is 15 and practicing full time in Sweden who beat Robbie Frank and took a set off me. Despite losing the set I was happy with my play and felt like I was hitting the ball well.

Today was much harder going. The day got off to a bad start as a pack of stampeding wilderbeast broke my sleep at 4:30am. It turned out that it was just my roommate snoring incredibly loudly but I thought I was a goner. The next few hours were involuntarily spent wondering about the two tough matches we would be playing later in the day.

The hit up this morning went well and I felt like I was timing and hitting the ball almost perfectly. It all changed once I got out on court. I started against the South African number 2 and played very tentatively. That’s a problem for me and my game as the quality of my shots really deteriorates when I’m not being active and positive with my shots. I scraped through 14-12 in the 1st, lost the second game comfortably and was feeling terrible about proceedings. Good players will do that to you but I felt I wasn’t doing myself much good. Stressed and reckless shots often turn up as an overcompensation for tentative play and I was doing plenty of both. I tried my hardest to slow my game down, focusing on playing with plenty of spin and margin for error. The change in approach worked well and I took the next two games.

Next up was their number 1, Shane Overmeyer, who had comfortably accounted to David Powell in the first match. Shane is a solid player, without big shots but with an uncanny ability to hit the ball on the table. Against that sort of player I’ll usually try to break up the play with plenty of variation and make life as uncomfortable as I can. However I just wasn’t feeling or seeing the ball well enough to be able to do this. I was unusually inconsistent with my shots, especially with my backhand topspin which I can almost always rely on. Shane wasn’t giving anything away and the match turned into a real dogfight. At two sets all it was anyone’s game. I kept reminding myself of the basics - to slow my shots down, get plenty of topspin and height over the net. Often there is no prize for complicating things. I got a good start in the 5th set and ran away to win 11-3. In the end my tomahawk serve and backhand topspin came good and got me over the line.

We rushed back to the hotel, tried to keep lunch down and had about an hour to rest before we had to leave for our next match. Saudi Arabia was up next. They had won their first two matches and were looking sharp. Powell lost to their nr 1, I beat their nr 2 and Oh Nam “the Korean cannon” Ho took his 2nd 3-0 victory of the day. The nr 3 position is such an important match and we are 3 from 3 so far.

The Saudi nr 1 has some serious skills. I’d never seen him or heard of him before but I was impressed with his performance. A very strong backhand topspin and countertopspin backed up by awkward serves and erratic fast service returns. I was shaky in the first set to say the least, losing 12-10. My game was up and down and I was making unforced errors for no apparent reason. The whole idea behind my game is that I get as many first attacks on the table but this wasn’t working today. I was over-hitting backhands, misjudging the height and carry-through of my opponent’s shots (which makes good timing near impossible) and was getting progressively angrier as the match went on. Normally I’ll always have an idea of what I’m doing wrong and will try to adjust but I felt like I was doing the right things to no avail.

I think my on court behaviour is pretty good these days but it certainly wasn’t in this match and I'm a little embarassed in hindsight. There was a violent battle going on inside me with part of me getting more and more frustrated in an attempt to work out what the heck was going wrong (I still didn’t work it out), another part was reminding the first part to get back to the basic tactic and another part was livid with anger (I reckon whatever they are putting in the murky ‘stews’ being served at the restaurant has been pumped full of hormones first). I wasn’t enjoying the show. I had three match points at 2-1, 10-7 but somehow managed to lose the next 5 points. The decider seesawed backwards and forwards. I was up 4-1, down 5-4, up 7-5, even at 7-7 and won 11-7.

Unfortunately Robbie Frank rolled his ankle in the first match against Sri Lanka and has spent the past day and a half hobbling around. The ankle has swelled up badly and looks terrible. He’s able to put some weight on it again and we’re hopeful he’ll be able to play again before the end of the event. I’ll be trying to get a good night’s sleep and gather my thoughts before tomorrow night’s match against Venezuela. There is a lot to work on.