On February 16, the seventh day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, most Chinese were still immersed in the festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival holiday, while a world-class table tennis tournament filled with gunsmoke had kicked off in Busan, South Korea.
The 2024 World Table Tennis Championships in Busan is the first time that South Korea has hosted the ITTF World Table Tennis Championships finals, and this competition will also be used as a qualifier for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, so it is attracting attention.
According to the rules, the men's and women's quarter-finals teams in this competition will qualify for the team competition of the table tennis event of the Paris Olympic Games, so each team will send a super team to fight for the Olympic ticket. As the "dream team" of small ball, the Chinese men's and women's teams have locked the seats of the Paris Olympics through last year's Asian Championships, and this time they will hit the World Table Tennis Championships for the men's team for 11 consecutive championships and the women's team for 6 consecutive championships.
Li Falcon, the head coach of the national table tennis team, introduced that under the grand strategy of preparing for the Paris Olympics, according to the selection method, the Chinese team finally determined "the strongest team lineup at present". The men's team is composed of Fan Zhendong, Wang Chuqin, Ma Long, Liang Jingkun and Lin Gaoyuan, and the women's team sends Sun Yingsha, Wang Yidi, Chen Meng, Wang Manyu and Chen Xingtong. In 2022, it was this lineup that won the double championship in the team competition of the Chengdu World Table Tennis Championships. Seeing this lineup, the vast majority of Chinese fans only have two words in their hearts: stable.
Source: China Sports News.
According to reports, on the evening of February 12, the national table tennis arrived in Busan, South Korea, and began to adapt to training early in the morning of February 13.
According to the schedule, February 16 to 20 is the group stage, 40 teams each for men and women are divided into 8 groups to compete in a single round-robin, and the first place in the group advances to the top 16 of the men's and women's teams and ranks first in the group.
2. The third place will compete for the remaining half of the top 16 spots through the play-offs. In the men's team event, the seeded teams in each group are China, Germany, South Korea, France, Japan, Sweden, Brazil and Portugal. The seeded teams in each group of the women's team event are China, Japan, Germany, Chinese Taipei, South Korea, Hong Kong, Romania and France.
Everything seems to be going well. At 9 o'clock in the morning of the 16th, the Busan World Table Tennis Championships began the first match day, the national table tennis women's team faced the first group opponent Indian team, almost everyone thought that this was a game without suspense for the Chinese team to win, and even the ** TV sports channel did not broadcast this game live, but broadcast another game in the same time period - the host South Korean men's team against the Polish team, perhaps CCTV also believes that that is the focus of this round. However, what is surprising is that the Chinese team has experienced a thrilling blocking battle, as a senior fan, the author has followed the whole game and was shocked into a cold sweat several times.
Among them, there was a big upset in the first game. Sun Yingsha, ranked No. 1 in the world, lost 1-3 to the Indian team Aishka Mujik, especially in the fourth game, Sun Yingsha led the opponent 9-6, but the opponent scored 4 points in a row, and finally lost a good game. I have watched many matches of Sun Yingsha, and as the number one main force in women's table tennis with increasingly mature technology and psychology, it is very rare to make so many mistakes in key points. Fortunately, in the second game, Wang Manyu defeated Manica Batra 3-1 and equalized the score for the national table tennis team. But then in the third singles, Wang Yidi, who has risen to second in the world rankings, did not even get a game, and lost to Sliga Akula of the Indian team with a score of 0-3, and the national table tennis team fell behind again, which was rare in the group stage of the World Table Tennis Championships in the past. In the fourth game, Sun Yingsha withstood the pressure and defeated Manica Batra 3-1. In the final deciding set, Wang Manyu defeated Aishka Mujik 3-0, and finally helped the national table tennis team lock up the victory 3-2 and complete a difficult reversal.
Sun Yingsha Source: China Sports News.
I really didn't expect the Indian team to improve so quickly in the past two years. According to the data, in the Tokyo Olympic cycle, the Indian table tennis team began to emerge, of which the men's team was led by Achanta and Gana Sekaran, and the women's team was led by Batra, and began to appear frequently in the international table tennis arena.
Back in 2018, the then 22-year-old Batra was already making his mark. She defeated Singapore's and world No. 4 Feng Tien Wei twice at the Commonwealth Games to help India win both the women's team and women's singles titles. Feng Tianwei and Yu Mengyu have been members of the Singapore women's team since 2010, and they were both former Chinese players. The Indian women's table tennis team overthrew the Singapore team, the super hegemon team that has dominated the tournament for nearly 16 years, which also made the Indian Table Tennis Association determined to spend a lot of time to train a group of players such as Batra.
India's number one female table tennis player Batra Source: Tencent Sports.
At the 2023 Oman Open, the Indian women's team defeated China in the women's singles event, which was considered an unexpected victory. In addition, the Indian women's team also showed their potential and quality by knocking out top seeds Puerto Rico in the Women's Doubles.
In the women's doubles competition of the 2023 Asian Games, the Indian pair Ashika Mukherjee partnered Sutilta Mukherjee and eliminated the Chinese team Chen Meng Wang Yidi in an upset and won the bronze medal in the women's doubles, making a historic breakthrough.
It is worth noting that the strong rise of the Indian women's team, in addition to the outstanding performance of the players, also benefited from their use of a unique combination of equipment, that is, backhand arc resistant rubber and forehand granular rubber.
Anti-arc rubber is a surface material that is usually used as a rubber surface layer for table tennis rackets. Its main function is to increase the arc resistance of the racket, making it easier for the racket to control the arc and spin of the ball. This rubber is usually made of rubber or other elastic materials, which has good adhesion properties and abrasion resistance.
Source: Xinhua News Agency.
The Indian team's "guerrilla-style" style of play was also the key to their unexpected victory. They adopted an unusual tactic, using backhands and forehands flexibly in order to better cope with the various attacks of the Chinese team. The adhesion of the anti-arc rubber in the backhand helps the Indian players better control the arc and spin of the ball, allowing them to launch counterattacks with more precision. The forehand granular rubber adds to the irregularity of the ball** and creates a surprise chance for the Indian player. This "guerrilla-style" style of play not only makes it difficult for opponents to deal with, but also makes the game more exciting and interesting.
In the first round of the World Table Tennis Championships in Busan against China, it is obvious that the uniqueness of this style of play can be seen, such as the first game of Mujik against Sun Yingsha, you will see that Mujik's backhand arc rubber ball made Sun Yingsha very uncomfortable, no wonder in an interview after the game, Sun Yingsha said, "My first opponent, we didn't play against her, and Chen Xingtong played with her once, and I didn't know so much about her spin and style." ”
Although it has a strong impact on the Chinese team, the rise of the Indian team is definitely a good thing for the development of world table tennis, and it proves that with the support of appropriate tactics and player skills, the effective use of special rubber can be a powerful ** and change the trend of the game. The success of the Indian team also sends an important message to the global table tennis community that innovative and diverse tactical strategies can achieve great success in the arena. This also proves once again that table tennis is a sport of creativity and tactical diversity.
Of course, we also have reason to believe that as the world's best table tennis team, no matter how strong the opponent is, the Chinese team will be able to quickly summarize and find a way to defeat the enemy, and we also reversed the opponent, the Busan World Table Tennis Championships has just started, and the first round of encountering a strong opponent is definitely of positive significance for the follow-up game, I wish the national table tennis men's and women's teams to reach the top again in Busan, and continue to point to the Paris Olympics.
Author丨Huang Gang, the chief writer of Shenzhen Satellite TV Direct News.
Editor丨Yang Ying, Editor-in-Chief of Shenzhen Satellite TV Direct News.