Random Singapore Table Tennis Ranting

I have never liked Li Jia Wei’s style of table-tennis; some of you guys would know, especially the ones who play table tennis with me. Generally, I have nothing against her, other than she is a tiong and I stereotype; my “not liking her” involves her style of play. She plays an aggressive style which is best suited to the short pimples rubber. Minimal spin, but tremendous speed and counter attack returns.


Picture: (From top to bottom) Long pimples, medium pimples, short pimples and flat surface

And if you look closely in the ITTF Rankings, only 1 player has short pimples rubber on the bats for the men. As for the ladies, only Li Jia Wei uses this kind of rubber. The rest all uses normal type of flat surface rubber. Probably the other most famous person who had used this short pimpled rubber is Liu Guo Liang. But like Timo Boll, he had never been ranked in the top 3 frequently. So my point being, for some reason, the normal kind of rubber still works best on the courts (see *).


Thus, I feel that it will be extremely difficult for Li to actually evolve her game into a consistent top 3 player to even help Singapore win another medal. And if you guys observe the China team, they seldom have players using other types of rubber except the flat surfaced ones. Also, look at the previous players who have left China to join the other teams; many played the pimpled surface rubbers too. A coincidence, I don’t know…. Call me a skeptic, but this is me with my years of playing the game. But then again, she did won us a medal after all - I am leaning towards the notion that she was lucky but I rest my case because we all know luck is also another element in any competition.

Feng Tian Wei… higher chance and potential… Li Jia Wei… hmmm probably not… So let her retire and have all the babies she want man… Besides, it is time to really nurture some Singaporean local talents while stop relying on foreign ones…

*P.S: Just thought you guys wanna know, I play a short hand bat (flat surface rubber with long pimples behind) and I used to play quite a bit with the different pimpled rubber surfaces.