From vest-clad men wielding sandpaper bats to male and female athletes in sponsored gear and armed with the latest equipment, the ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships have come a long way since 1926.
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The event has evolved from parquet floors to Taraflex and wood-paneled halls to huge arenas with all the razzmattaz of sports-as-entertainment.
Add to that the changes in the rules, a shift in dominance from Europe to Asia, the number of competing countries – and even the upgrade from black and white to color photographs – and it’s fair to say the event has become unrecognizable from a century ago.
As we prepare to return to London for the centenary edition of the championships, let’s take a look at some of the key milestones the sport has passed along the way.
A full set of competitions
The championships started in 1926 with a total of five events: there was no women’s team event and no women’s doubles. It was not long before the latter was introduced at the second World Championships in Stockholm in 1928, but it was not until 1933 that the first women’s team competition was introduced, at the eighth World Championships in Paris.
That meant a new trophy: the addition of the Corbillon Cup for women’s teams, to go along with the Swaythling Cup, which was awarded to the men’s team champions. To this day, both cups are awarded to the champion country.
Offensive play encouraged
At the 10th World Championships in Prague in 1936, the longest rally took place in the opening men’s team match between Poland and Romania, when the first point between Alojzy Ehrlich and Farkas Paneth lasted two hours and twelve minutes!
The following year, three decisions were made to promote attacking play:
- The net was lowered from 6.75 inches to 6 inches
- A time limit of 20 minutes was imposed for each match
- Finger spinning was prohibited
In 1947, the Service Act was further amended to introduce the planar hand projection of service.
New racket technology and Asia come to the fore
The 19th World Championships in Calcutta were the first to be held in Asia and only the second outside Europe (after 1939 in Cairo).
It was also the first Asian champion, with Japan’s Hiroji Sato causing perhaps the biggest sensation ever in men’s singles; using a thickly covered sponge racket he mesmerized opponents.
It’s fair to say it caught on quickly – London saw the first full sponge final between Ichiro Ogimura (Japan) and Tage Flisberg (Sweden) in men’s singles in 1954 – it became known as the Silent Final as the clap of traditional rackets echoing around the arena was replaced.
By 1959, agreement had been reached on the standardization of rackets, with the elimination of thick sponge. And in 1961, the racket color was standardized as the same on both sides.
Offering adjustments to the rules
Further refinements to the service action were agreed between the 1960s and 1980s, starting with a 1967 decision that required: “the ball must be placed on the palm of the free hand, which must be stationary, and above the level of the playing serve without imparting spin and almost vertically upwards”. This ended with so-called under the table services where the ball was thrown directly onto the racket from below the height of the table surface.
Foot stamping during the service action was declared illegal in 1983 and in the same year further decisions banned players from serving with their backs to the table and prevented the racket from going below the table surface from the moment the ball was in hand for the purpose of serving.
Any color, as long as it’s black (and red).
In 1983, a change was made to the racket covering rules, requiring a racket to be clearly different colors on each side. It was further refined in 1985 to limit the trim to red and black.
This remained the case until 2021, when one side of the racket had to be black and the other side had a choice of red, pink, purple or green.
A whole new ball game
A new millennium ushered in new balls, when the 38 mm (1.50 in) ball was officially replaced by a 40 mm ball in October 2000; the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the last major event with the old ball.
As of 2015, table tennis balls are made from a polymer instead of celluloid. The first World Championships to use the polymer ball was in Suzhou in 2015.
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