Ping pong: Fave of Torres, Gavi’s Spain & why Sathiyan thinks fans must play it

‘Fans should play TT’ – Sathiyan

Making a pitch for the sport back in India, is decorated paddler who played a heroic role in Delhi’s win over Kolkata in the ongoing UTT league. But G Sathiyan isn’t content with fans merely watching the sport. He urges them to play it.

Fans like athletes that win. Athletes like fans that play, he says.

Speaking at last month’s Olympic Day for the ‘Let’s Move’ initiative, Indian TT star G Sathiyan didn’t make the usual plea to fans to support athletes. “Don’t just wait for Olympians to win. Start playing yourself. Sport is more fun that way,” he dares, stating that to be physically active is more important for Indian sports culture, than merely getting inspired by what fans watch on television.

Olympic education, Sathiyan reckoned, needed to be transformational. “More participating in sport, than watching,” he plainly stated.

The thought came from a query that had confounded him. Why was he playing from 2 feet out from the table for an easy put-away? “When you play TT, and hit the ball and it suddenly strikes your mind ‘what’s that spin!?’ you enjoy the sport more. (Figuring that ping pong spin) becomes an addiction,” he says. It’s the first step to understanding and appreciating elite competition sport.

“TT is a very technical sport. There’s spin involved on the ball that you can’t see with the naked eye,” he explains. It challenges the Indian fan’s reductive win-loss judgments that get loosely aired. While TT has grown exponentially in the last few years, what exactly is the gulf in capabilities between Chinese champions and Indians – beyond obvious rankings and titles, can be tough to wrap the head around.

“For an amateur, TT is fun to play,” he starts. “As you grow, beyond the extreme speed and agility, there’s explosive movement in fraction of a second, reactive strength, as we call it,” Sathiyan says. “We Indians need to get a lot better at that,” he says.

Still, fans can expect a steady rise in performance graph of TT after the men’s team won bronze at Jakarta Asiad. A mixed and women’s doubles bronze have followed. “20-25 years ago, we could say it was a ‘dream’ to win Asiad medals. Now it’s goals. Indian women have wins over some of the best Chinese. And though we need a very strong team, even Chinese would be under pressure playing India from now. We need belief and to not treat them as invincibles,” Sathiyan, on his way to his third Asiad, says.

Though not a combat sport, TT has its fair share of tricks to show aggression – again what the naked eye can’t fathom, but Indian players encounter. “They will give a stare occasionally before a serve to intimidate. Or just a hard handshake at the start. Little things,” he laughs.

TT thrives on reels of trick shots, has been a prominent drum-beat of an Enrique Iglesias pop video and even has a few successful pitches centred around it on American Shark Tank – pointing to its high popularity at recreational levels globally. It’s why Sathiyan, who himself enjoyed playing basketball at school before becoming a fan, wants loyal fans to also get moving around a table.

But mostly TT gets technical when the tricks of the paddle, its pimples, two faces and speed of the ball whip up the spin. On Olympic Day, Sathiyan says a true fan is one that knows how a ping pong ball spins.

The sport had top tier fans in the winning Football World Cup team of Spain.