Friday, December 31, 2010

Timo Boll runner-up in German Athlete of the Year Poll

Timo Boll came second in the race for Germany's athlete of the year. Sebastian Vettel topped the poll in which 1,300 journalists participated. The event was held at the ZDF Gala evening in Kuhaus, Baden Baden. Golfer Martin Kaymer finished third.

Timo Boll's achievements:

  • Led Germany to the Silver medal at the Liebherr World Team Championships at Moscow
  • Third at Liebherr Men's World Cup
  • Three titles at European Championships (Men's singles, Men's Doubles and Team)
  • Men's Singles winner at German Open, Europe Top 12, Volkswagen Cup
  • Main player at Borussia Dusseldorf in Bundesliga. Won German Cup and European Champions League

USATT Coach of the year


The following coaches have been nominated for the Coach of the year to the U.S. Olympic Committee's Coach of the Year selection process.

National Team COY - Lily Yip (Current Women's Jr. National Team Coach) - Warren, NJ
Development COY - Sean O'Neill - Portland, OR
Paralympic COY - Daniel Rutenberg - Frisco, TX

USATT new Membership Rates Effective April 1, 2011


The following are the new USATT Membership Rates effective April 2011:

Adult one-year membership $ 49
Adult three-year membership $130
Collegiate one-year membership $ 25
Junior one-year membership $ 25
Junior three-year membership $ 60
Household one-year membership $ 90
Household three-year membership $250
Millennium Life membership $1,000
Foreign one-year membership $ 75

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

China to train foreign Table Tennis players

Liu Guoliang and Shi Zhihao will head the coaching team that will train foreign players at the Shanghai Table Tennis Academy. China has been criticized for dominating Table Tennis at the World level.

The training will include Table Tennis theory and practice based on the Chinese methods.

Players who train at the academy will have to work hard. It may entail spending 7 hours of hard sweat and toil for around 6 days a week. The sessions are expected to start from next September and the academy has the strong backing of the Shanghai government.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Flash news: Sathiyan wins at Vadodara


G Sathiyan created a major upset by beating Soumyadeep Roy to win the Central Zone national ranking tournament at Vadodara 4-2.

Details awaited.

Professional Indian Table Tennis Players


It is interesting to note that there is a growing trend of Table Tennis players from India competing in League matches in foreign countries. For example, Sharath Kamal plays in the elite German Bundesliga. Zubin Kumar and Pathik Mehta play in the Spanish leagues. Soumyajit Ghosh, G Sathiyan, and Harmeet Desai are spending extended periods of time training in Sweden. Some other players spent time training in China. Many other players have played different leagues at various times.

Right now, most of these players do not earn lucrative sums of money, but there is some hope from this year. The ITTF has announced aggressive plans for the Pro Tour with handsome prize money. If the game gets more popular, there is a chance that the leagues will play more money to the participants. This is indeed a good trend.

Do you know of any other professional players?

Monday, December 27, 2010

Flash news - Arnab Adhikari wins Junior Boy's crown at Baroda


Arnab Adhikari claimed another top victim to emerge champion in the Junior Boy's event at the Central Zone Table Tennis championship at Baroda.

Arnab won 4-1 against Sudhanshu Grover. Earlier, Arnab had scripted a major upset over Abhishek Yadav.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

How to play against pips both sides players (long and short)


Many times, in tournament play, you may have faced irritation in playing against a player who has pips out on both sides. A popular combination is long pips on the backhand and short pips to finish off rallies on the forehand. We will consider classical long pips with maximum effect (hence minimum sponge and so on).

We can deal with the short pips first. Many good players get confused even to handle the short pips side in matches. The reason is that the prospect of facing a very strong both sides pips player is mentally daunting for those who fear such a combination or have faced defeat at some point in their career.

In case of short pips, you need to remember that this rubber is just designed to neutralize spin. So, if you deliver a service with good spin, the short pips simply neutralizes it. The same holds true for backspin, topspin or sidespin. The rubber simply absorbs the opponent's spin.

So there are just a couple of things to remember while playing against the short pips side. When you play deep underspin or deep topspin or a spin service, expect a normal return almost like a float. You can almost play normally against this side if you understand the basics of facing this kind of rubber.

The long pips side could be a bit trickier, but again if you understand the logic behind the functioning of the rubber, it may be easier to tackle it. Some popular long pips rubbers are Butterfly Feint, Dr Neubauer Monster Classic, DHS C7, Stiga Destroyer, TSP Curl and so on.

The grid density, the aspect ratio are advanced concepts that are out of the scope of this article. Once you understand the starting concepts, you can extrapolate and understand the advanced too.

The most important thing to note against long pips is that the type of spin you play against it is reversed back to you. So, topspin comes back to you as underspin, underspin comes back as topspin. Sidespins are returned as complex wobbles due to the ball fighting opposite forces. When you play a topspin, you are mostly forced to play a push on the next ball since the underspin is heavy, especially against spinny loops.

When you play a push, the ball comes back as topspin and many players hit the ball out thinking that what they see is just a push (it is topspin). Now, when you face a player who has short pips on the forehand and long pips on the forehand, keep your body balanced always and be ready for unexpected ball movement. The easiest strategy is to play normally on the forehand and concentrate on that side most of the time. When you do hit a topspin on the backhand, expect heavy underspin and push the next ball, get into position and only then hit the next ball.

Doordarshan Live Telecast of matches


Doordarshan is telecasting the Central Zone TT matches live. The next scheduled telecast is at 3 PM (25th December).

The matches that are expected to be shown are Senior section Main draw 1st round.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Soumyadeep, Mouma Top seeds at Vadodara Central Zone TT Nationals

Soumyadeep Roy and Mouma Das are the top seeds in the Men's and Women's Singles respectively at the Central Zone Table Tennis National level tournament at Vadodara. G Sathiyan and Divya Deshpande are the highest seeds in the Youth Boys and Girls sections.

The Central Zone event is the last zonal event before the Nationals at Kolkata and hence some keen competition is expected. Most of the matches from the quarterfinal onwards in the Men's event are expected to be very competitive.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Sourav, Mouma win North Zone Ranking Table Tennis titles

Sourav Chakravarthy and Mouma Das won the North Zone Ranking Table Tennis tournament held at New Delhi. In the finals, they beat Soumyajit Ghosh and Mamta Prabhu respectively, but in contrasting styles.

While Sourav coasted to a 4-2 win over the relatively inexperienced Soumyajit, Mouma held her nerve and beat back Mamta's challenge 4-3.

Harmeet Desai asserted his growing stature on the domestic scene beating G Sathiyan in the Youth Boy's finals. Pooja Sahasrabudhe beat Divya Deshpande in a daring comeback from 3-1 down.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Zubin stars in Spanish League

Zubin (Center) in an earlier photo
Zubin Kumar played a stellar role in his team's last two encounters in the Spanish league. Zubin won all his four matches to star in Tramuntana Figueres's wins over C N Mataro Quadis and Caja De Burgos.

Zubin beat Xavier Peral and Jordi Jason Ramos of C N Mataro Quadis on 11th December. In the last league encounter Zubin beat Ruben Dehesa and Ferenc Horvath of Caja De Burgos. Zubin's win percentage was an astounding 81% for the year!

With this, Tramuntana leaped to the top spot in the Men's Honor division.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Sharath ends German League season on a high

Sharath Kamal ended his first season in the Premium division of the German league table tennis on a high by winning both his matches against the top team of the league, Borussia Dusseldorf. However, Sharath's team mates at TSV Grafelfing could not grab the other rubber required to clinch the tie.
TSV Grafelfing finished 9th in the league. The astounding part of the achievement by Sharath was that he won 9 out of the 10 matches that his team managed to win against their top notch achievements. The only other win was in the doubles by Nico Christian and Gabriel Stephan.

Sharath gives Olympic Champ a fright

Sharath Kamal gave 2004 Olympic champion, Ryu Seung Min by extending him to the full 7 game distance before losing out narrowly 3-11,9-11,11-1,11-7,9-11,12-10, and 8-11 at the annual Pro Tour Grand Table Tennis finals.


Meanwhile, seeds continued to tumble. Top seed Vladimir Samsonov of Belarus lost to Jun Mizutani of Japan 2-4 in the semi-finals. The second seed, Ovtcharov had already lost in the very first round to Bastian Steger. Steger, continued his spectacular run and is playing Jun Mizutani in the finals. At the moment of writing this article, Jun is leading 2-1 in games.
(Update: Jun won the Grand finals beating Steger of Germany in the finals.)

Friday, December 17, 2010

Sharath advances to the Quarterfinals


India's A Sharath Kamal beat Lee Sang Su of the host country in a thrilling match (4-3) to advance to the Quarter finals of the year ending Pro Tour Grand Finals tournament.

In a cliff-hanger of a match which went down to the wire, Sharath beat Lee Sang 11-13,11-9,5-11,11-9,11-9,8-11,15-13. Sharath now plays 2004 Olympic Champion, Ryu Seung Min.


The sensation of the day was the loss of the No. 2 seed Ovtcharov Dimitrij who lost to his countryman Bastian Steger in the first round.

A R Navaneeth wins Karnataka State Championships

~~ Vikramadithya Shivaram

Favorite Navaneeth bagged the Karnataka State Champion title beating Anirban Tarafdar 4-2.
Promising Shreyal Telang, fresh from his victory at the West Zone Nationals at Nagpur, beat experienced Sagayaraj to reach the semi-finals. Aditya Mahagaokar who is doing his advanced studies at Bengaluru was the other semi-finalist.

Other Results:

Semifinals
Anirban Tarafdar beat Shreyal Telang 4-1
Navaneeth beat Aditya Mahagaonkar 4-0

Quarter finals:
Anirban beat Jaideep Das 4-1
Shreyal beat Sagayraj 4-3
Aditya Mahagaonkar beat Yeshwanth 4-2
Navaneeth beat Sunand Vasan 4-1

Sharath and Subhajit beaten at the Pro Tour Grand finals


Commonwealth gold medalists Sharath Kamal and Subhajit Saha faced the wrath of the Commonwealth finalists. The lost 0-4 to GAO Ning and YANG Zi 8-11,1-11,3-11,7-11 in the first round of the Pro Tour Grand Finals.

Sharath's hopes are still alive in the tough Singles competition where he faces Lee Sang Su of Korea in the first round today.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Famous Uttar Pradesh Table Tennis Players


Some popular Table Tennis names in Uttar Pradesh.

Vivek Kohli
Anshul Garg
Anil Sen
Zabarjeet Singh
Atin Rastogi
Parag Agarwal
Kaushik-de-Sarkar
Rahul Prakash
Sanjeev  Pathak
Sanjeev Kapoor
S.P. Singh
Sandeep  Gupta 

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Top Table Tennis Players of Gujarat

Top Men's Players of Gujarat

Harmeet Desai SRT
Pathik Mehta BVN
Jignesh Jaiswal BVN
Dharmaraj Rana BVN
Hardik Bhatt BVN
Sujay Chaturvedi RJT
Ravi Joshi BVN
Malay Parikh BRD
Jalay Mehta BRD
Mahipal Gohil BVN
Jagdish Makwana BVN
Vijay Vala BVN
Mihir Dave AHM
Dev Kothari BVM

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Pathik Mehta's results at the Spanish League

03-10-2010 Pathik  GABRIEL GARCIA  LA ZUBIA GILAUTO  3-0
03-10-2010 Pathik  RAN WANG  LA ZUBIA GILAUTO  1-3
17-10-2010 Pathik  LUCA HAHN  CD SAN JAVIER TMVB  3-1
17-10-2010 Pathik  ISMAEL FLAMES  CD SAN JAVIER TMVB  3-0
07-11-2010 Pathik  EMILIO ANTONIO GARCIA  TM EXTREMADURA ALMENDRALEJO  3-1
07-11-2010 Pathik  PEREZ JUAN BAUTISTA  TM EXTREMADURA ALMENDRALEJO  3-0
13-11-2010 Pathik  JUAN GOMEZ  CTM HISPALIS  3-2
13-11-2010 Pathik  JOSE MANUEL GOMEZ  CTM HISPALIS  3-0
14-11-2010 Pathik  JESUS MARTIN  ERGO JEREZ  3-0
14-11-2010 Pathik  FREE SANCHO  ERGO JEREZ  3-2
21-11-2010 Pathik  ISRAEL RODRIGUEZ  CTM CajaGRANADA  3-0
21-11-2010 Pathik  FRANCISCO JAVIER RAMIREZ  CTM CajaGRANADA  3-0
27-11-2010 Pathik  JESUS RODRIGUEZ  CD CÁRTAMA TM  3-1
27-11-2010 Pathik  GUILLERMO SANCHEZ  CD CÁRTAMA TM  3-2
28-11-2010 Pathik  JOSE MIGUEL RAMIREZ  CAJASUR - PRIEGO TM  2-3
28-11-2010 Pathik  ALEJANDRO CALVO  CAJASUR - PRIEGO TM  3-2
12-12-2010 Pathik  ALEJANDRO PRATS  SANTA CTT EULARIA  3-0
12-12-2010 Pathik  LONG LI YI  SANTA CTT EULARIA  3

Jubin Kumar's performance at the Spanish League

02-10-2010 Jubin  ORIOL MIR  BORGES arithmetic  3-0
02-10-2010 Jubin  DAVID GONZALEZ  BORGES arithmetic  3-0
23-10-2010 Jubin  GUILLERMO MARTINEZ  TABLE TENNIS CD RIVAS  3-0
23-10-2010 Jubin  ALEXANDER SMIRNOV  TABLE TENNIS CD RIVAS  3-2
13-11-2010 Jubin  PEDRO LOPEZ  LEGANES ADTM  3-0
13-11-2010 Jubin  SERGEI Sokolovsky  LEGANES ADTM  3-0
14-11-2010 Jubin  DIAMANDI Gherasim  CENTURY BRUNETE  1-3
14-11-2010 Jubin  EDUARDO GONZALEZ  CENTURY BRUNETE  3-1
21-11-2010 Jubin  CRISTOBAL FERNANDEZ  CLUB DEL MAR  3-0
21-11-2010 Jubin  ZHAO QIANG  CLUB DEL MAR  1-3
27-11-2010 Jubin  JOSE MIGUEL NUT  TM DEFENSE - LA PALMA  3-0
27-11-2010 Jubin  HENRIK ANDERSSON BO ARON  TM DEFENSE - LA PALMA  1-3
11-12-2010 Jubin  XAVIER PEAR  CN MATARO - Quadis  3-2
11-12-2010 Jubin  Yordi JASON RAMOS  CN MATARO - Quadis  3-0 

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Sharath's good performance at the German League


Sharath is the top player for his club in the Bundesliga. He has made a good start to the season. He missed playing Jan-ove Waldner though.

Here are his results this season:

Beat Jiri Vrablik 3-2
Beat Chu Yan Leung 3-1
Beat Kenji Matsudaira 3-0
Beat Robert Gardos 3-1
Beat Adrian Dodean 3-0
Lost to Adrian Crisan 0-3
Beat Erik Bottroff 3-1
Beat Bin Zhou 3-1
Lost to Keinath Thomas 2-3
Lost to Robert Svensson 2-3
Lost to Wang Xi 1-3
Lost to Bastian Steger 0-3

Friday, December 10, 2010

Table Tennis News Bites - Sharath Kamal Updates

As we know, right now Sharath is playing in the German league for TSV Gräfelfing in the prestigious 1st Division Table Tennis league in Germany.

TSV Gräfelfing currently stand 9th in the league.

Sharath will play two more league matches before he comes to India on the 14th December.

Just to repeat, Sharath has been selected to play the Pro Tour Grand Finale at Seoul from 16th December. Only the World's top 16 players are invited for this event!

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Table Tennis News Bites

India finished 10th at the World Junior Table Tennis Championships at Bratislava.

India's promising juniors fought hard before being eliminated by France in the main knock out matches. Earlier, in the league matches, India lost to higher seeds Poland 3-2 after leading 2-0 at one stage.

India beat Egypt and lost to Taipei in the 9-12 position play offs.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Table Tennis news bites

News Bites:
Pooja Sahasrabuddhe won the Women's Singles Title at Maldives in the Golden Jubilee Invitational tournament. She beat Neha Aggarwal of India in the finals.

Aniket Koparkar lost to higher ranked Lennart Wehking in the semi-finals.
_________________________________________________________________________________
The Indian Junior Boy's team reached the elite 1-12 stage in the World Juniors Table Tennis Championships being held at Bratislava. They play France today.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Player Profile: Harmeet Desai


Harmeet has always been ahead of the curve. Winning the National Junior crown at a young age, and also gaining a ranking not only in the Youth section, but also in the Senior (Men's Category)


Harmeet is currently training hard at Sweden for the World Junior Championship to be held at Bratislava (Slovak Republic).


 Name: Harmeet Desai

Date of Birth:19-07-1993

Coaches: Hraday Desai, Peter Karlsson, Bhavani Mukherji, and Massimo Constantini.

Ambition: To win a medal in the Olympic Games.

Achivements: 

  • Junior National Champion 09-10
  • Bronze Medal in the Asian Junior Championships 2010
  • Silver Medal in Singles in Taiyuan Junior Open 2009-2010.