more about Ping!
Table tennis, the sport that almost everybody has played at one time or another, has a unique position among all other popular world sports. The evolution of table tennis at a competition level has been dominated by changes in equipment.
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This fascinating story is punctuated by moments of drama where unknown players have burst onto the international scene upsetting established champions and setting the sport into a new direction. These pivotal changes sparked bitter conflicts – sometimes drawn out over decades - between the authorities, players, and those with commercial interests in creating new products.
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Set against the historical background, Ping! is also a very personal story, charting the experiences of how a young boy whose humiliating failures in other sports led to a lifetime commitment to table tennis.
My journey to writing Ping! was a long and bumpy road. It began in the days before social media had taken hold of our lives. I was regularly participating, along with thousands of others from around the world, in a couple of popular internet forums where we discussed a wide range of table tennis topics. I was aware that England’s standing in table tennis, in comparison to the rest of the world, had sunk steadily from the early 1950s. But I had never really considered the reasons.
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One day, while discussing a particular topic, I remembered something that I had seen published in Table Tennis News and scanned the article to post in the forum. The resulting discussion continued, and I was amazed at the level of interest generated by uploading the cutting. This set my mind working in other directions. Firstly, I realised that Table Tennis News was a tremendous source of information about the development of the sport – especially in England, but also in the rest of the world. The magazines could provide the foundation for some fascinating research into how table tennis had evolved, and it was possible that I could find the key to how England had dropped from being a world leader to an also-ran.
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That insight was quickly followed by another. Along with many other regular table tennis players I had been very sad to see how Table Tennis News had been axed prematurely, depriving followers of regular news about national and international events, as well as the features and controversies that had made it such a lively publication in its earlier days. I was determined that the superb work of the early editors and contributors should be preserved and made available online.
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By the time I had gone through the rather painful process of gathering all 350 editions and scanning 15,595 pages, I was determined to continue with the research into the evolution of table tennis. The result, eventually, was Ping!
Researching and trying to make sense of the history was fascinating and complex. While I began to feel I was beginning to understand the key issues, I was a novice author and struggled to find a way of turning the story into something readable. I will leave you to judge whether I succeeded.