The World Team Championships ended yesterday and I’d like to share some of my thoughts with AussieTableTennis.com readers. The event ran smoothly for the most part. The living and eating (especially the eating!) conditions were not up to standard for such an event and there was huge unrest amongst the players and coaches. The amount of people in the food hall gradually decreased as the tournament went on.

 The playing conditions were good and the presentation of the hall looked great. I was positively surprised by the level of umpiring. I believe that umpires should play a minimal role in table tennis – there should be as little as possible that needs to be judged. Unfortunately the current service rule and recent equipment rule changes are still causing some problems and it looks like things are going to worse before they get better. The umpiring at the last Worlds I played (2009 in Japan) was absolutely atrocious and it was like the many of the umpires were competing with each other to see who could change the course of most amount of matches. However I must say that the umpires were commendable apart from one elderly Russian umpire in one of our matches.

 The Australian men achieved the goal of promotion back to Division 2 and I look forward to playing some really strong opposition at the next World Teams. I hope this event showed the younger players in the team a few things about the depth of table tennis in the World these days. It means little that you’ve never seen the opposing player before or which country he comes from. Some of the younger guys have achieved high Australian rankings and (rightly so) been selected for national teams without having learnt the necessary skills to be able to win matches at big events like the Worlds.

 Oh Nam Ho was a positive surprise and went undefeated throughout his 7 matches playing in the third position. The nr 3s are often a bit weaker than the top 2 players in the team however Nam showed an ability to win matches against different playing styles in pressure situations and that’s a lot harder than many give credit for.

 I was pleased with the end result at the Worlds. Winning all 12 of my matches was nice but it was not pretty at times. The players I was playing were between 270 and 600 in the world. I’d expect to have a good chance of winning all my matches but I can definitely lose to guys of that level too. The hardest part for me this trip was not knowing or understanding what was going wrong when my game broke down. But I’m very pleased I managed to hold things together enough to still get over the line.

 There was a major upset in the women’s event with China ‘D’ (aka Singapore) beating China ‘A’ (aka China) for the gold medal. I wonder if China is regretting selling off their 2nd tier players?

 China won the men’s event against Germany in the final. Timo Boll beat world nr 1 Ma Long, coming back from 2-0 down. Timo has an uncanny ability to make counter-topspins by just throwing out an arm and somehow managing to connect with the ball. His body sort of flops as it is moving through the air which is one of the keys as it shows he is completely relaxed. He uses his wrist so well to play efficient shots which means his recovery is good and he has more time than he otherwise would. Christian Suss had 1-0 and 9-6 against Zhang Yike in the 3rd match but Zhang lifted his game just enough to take the match.

 Ma Lin was the hero for China. He cleaned up Dimitry Ovtcharov 3-0 and took Timo 3-1 to give China the gold. Ma Lin is so quick around the court and mixes amazing touch in his over-the-table shots with the best 3rd ball topspin attack in the world. His arm can move completely independently from the rest of his body whichever was his body is heading and he also has good control of the mechanics of the different parts of his arm (wrist, forearm, bicep). Very, very impressive.

 Coverage from the World Championships will be broadcast very soon on Foxtel. Aussie Table Tennis will be running a commercial on Foxtel throughout the coverage. Times below:

 15 June – 10:00am Fox Sports 3 / Replay Midnight Fox Sports 1
16 June – 10:00am Fox Sports 3 / Replay Midnight Fox Sports 1
18 June – 12:30am Fox Sports 2 / Replay 10:00am Fox Sports 2