If people say they’re not sure about reading my new table-tennis themed novel doubles because they don’t like sport, I insist it’s actually about people, relationships and family secrets. Lots of unsporty people have enjoyed it, honest! Which is true, but the table-tennis is important too, because it’s a metaphor for the spins and deceptions going on beneath the surface. And also, I’d love to introduce more people to the game. I mean, what’s not to love about a sport which is simple to take up, sociable, and highly accessible? A couple of bats and a ball cost under a fiver, and you can get going on the kitchen table. For £2 or £3 you can play for a couple of hours at a club.

Table-tennis is played by people from all walks of life, male and female, old and young. You can enjoy a gentle game as a beginner, or be a highly competitive athlete. At the Oxford Table Tennis Association’s Friday night open evenings, http://odtta.org.uk/ players range from young children learning against mum or dad, adults having an informal knock-about or doing intense training exercises, through to some in their seventies. There’s no retirement age for table tennis, witness Oxfordshire legend the late Alf Davies, a top player through his seventies, and a World Doubles champion at over-seventies level. You can play whatever your size, shape and fitness level: making up for your lack of mobility with spin, cunning and a long reach.


It's a great sport for people with disabilities, the 4th largest Paralympic sport. I remember as a teenager playing a boy in a wheelchair who produced unreturnable shots holding a bat in his mouth. Nicko, pictured right, plays table tennis with TTK Greenhouse, and hopes to make the GB Paralympic table tennis team. I'm a big fan of the Greenhouse charity, which aims to transform the lives of young people in deprived communities through sport and performing arts, and I particularly support their table-tennis arm TTK Greenhouse which sees 5000 young participants playing each week.In fact I'm donating them £1 for every copy of doubles sold. http://www.greenhouseschools.org/index.php?cPath=269_293_337

It’s a shame there isn’t the same level of youth club table-tennis there used to be, because as well as being a serious sport, it’s a good game for teenagers to play informally, while chatting and listening to music.  England number 2, 19 year old Darius Knight, credits table-tennis with saving him from the gang lifestyle taken up by some of his contemporaries.



Internationally, the International Table-Tennis Federation has an exciting development programme for women and girls around the world, including, for example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Iran.
http://www.ittf.com/_front_page/ittf_full_story1.asp?ID=17678&Category=women&Competition_ID=&

People who played in the days when table-tennis was much more widespread in the UK often speak of its sad decline. “I remember when all this round here was green tables!” And true, the world of huge leagues full of factory and youth club teams – as portrayed, for example, in Howard Jacobson’s “table-tennis” novel The Mighty Walzer – is gone. But there are signs of growth. Certainly in Oxford, those Friday night sessions are overcrowded, and a new centre has just opened in Kidlington. There are developments at national level through the English Table Tennis Association http://www.englishtabletennis.org.uk/ and with Greenhouse. There’s increasingly good television coverage of table-tennis in the Olympics or other major events, which encourages people to have a go themselves. I know some people find table tennis comic at the top level: all these athletic men (and sometimes women, though the elite women’s game doesn’t usually look as dramatic) leaping and sweating as they thump a tiny, swiftly-moving piece of plastic and air like it actually matters. Though all sport is slightly absurd from that point of view. And table-tennis matches are often intentionally great fun, with players jumping over barriers to play shots, tricking each other with drop shots, playing to the crowd. Sky Sports showed a great example of this with the match between Jean-Michael Saive and Chen Weixing at the Royal Albert Hall Masters Table-tennis in May. A rematch of the 2008 epic at the same venue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkJvfEr2EDk

So, while I hope unsporty readers will take to doubles despite the table-tennis, I'm secretly hoping some of them might decide to pick up a bat!