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| Image credits: http://wttc2019.hu/ |
It’s an Olympic year
(“Er..? Did you not-? The pandem-” “I know, I know, but let’s pretend for a
while”) and as a Table Tennis fan I have only one question on my mind: Who will
be the men and women chosen to represent China in Table Tennis at the Olympics?
But first things first- let’s take a look at some background.
Table Tennis was introduced at the Olympics in 1988 at Seoul. Till
Athens 2004, there were four separate Olympic Table Tennis events (Men’s
Singles, Men’s Doubles, Women’s Singles and Women’s Doubles). In 2008, the
Doubles events were replaced by men’s and women’s team events, where each tie
is played on a best-of-five-matches basis which incorporates a doubles match
(see Box 1). At Tokyo 2020(1), for the first time, there is an additional
event: Mixed Doubles.
So far, quite unsurprisingly, China have absolutely dominated the
medals tally winning 28 out of 32 possible gold medals, with Republic of Korea
finishing a distant second winning 3 gold medals and Mozart of Table Tennis Jan
Ove Waldner’s gold in Men’s Singles at Barcelona 1992 ensuring that Sweden find
a mention on the honours board.
Table Tennis at this year’s (!) Olympics promises to be orders of
magnitudes more interesting than the last three editions which were completely
swept by China. The reason is the last few years have seen Chinese hegemony in
Table Tennis waver a tiny bit, with many top Chinese players experiencing losses
at the hands of foreigners. The top three male Chinese players – Fan Zhendong,
Ma Long and Xu Xin - have all lost to at least two non-Chinese opponents in
2019 and 2020. Ma long had the misfortune of being beaten by two teenagers in
the Men’s World Cup of 2019 when his semi-final loss to Japan’s Tomokazu
Harimoto was followed by defeat at the hands of Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yun-Ju in
the Bronze medal match. Xu Xin had to endure a heartbreaking exit at the 2019
World Championships when he was found lacking against the unconventional Frenchman
Simon Gauzy. After this defeat, however, Xu Xin hit a rich vein of form winning
several World Tour tournaments (and the Asian Championships) in a row. His next
loss to a foreigner came in March 2020 at Qatar Open when England’s Liam
Pitchford, playing the best match of his career, got the better of him. Fan
Zhendong experienced back to back early exits at the Korean Open and Australian
Open when he lost to Jeong Youngsik of Republic of Korea and Germany’s Patrick
Franziska respectively. Like Xu Xin, he too managed to pick up his form and
ended 2019 in a four tournament winning streak (5 if you include the World
Military Games), notably his third Men’s World Cup title and his second World
Tour Grand Finals. His incredible run came to an abrupt end, however, at the
2020 German Open, where he lost to the host nation’s Dimitrij Ovtcharov in a
closely fought encounter. Chinese women
have been considerably more consistent than their male counterparts in dealing
with non-Chinese opponents, barring the exception of the incredible Japanese
teenager Mima Ito, who has managed to beat all the top Chinese players (barring
the one exception of the current WR 1 Chen Meng) with a consistency without
parallel in modern history. Other than Ito, the only foreigners to have managed to upset the top Chinese women
(Chen Meng, Sun Yingsha, Liu Shiwen, Ding Ning, Wang Manyu and Zhu Yuling) that
I can think of are Hina Hayata, Kasumi Ishikawa and Hitomi Sato of Japan, Jeon
Jihee of Korea and Feng Tianwei of Singapore.
These upsets notwithstanding China still dominate the latest (April
2020) world rankings. Chinese men occupy 4 of the top 5 spots with Japanese
teenager Tomokazu Harimoto occupying the number 4 spot. Fan Zhendong’s victory
in Doha has propelled him to the top spot which he had relinquished to Xu Xin
earlier this year. Xu Xin now sits at number two. Ma Long (WR 3) and Lin
Gaoyuan (WR 5) sandwich Harimoto between them and Liang Jingkun at WR 8 is the 5th Chinese player in the
top 8. Another notable Chinese male player is the current Youth Olympic gold
medalist, Wang Chuqin, who is ranked number 12, well below his pedigree. He had
been picked for the now postponed World Team Championships ahead of Lin
Gaoyuan. His failure to break into the top 8 can be attributed to one rash
moment of madness when during a match at last year’s Austrian Open, he chucked
his racquet across the table narrowly missing his opponent and teammate Zhao
Zihao, which resulted in him being banned for three months.
The Chinese women are even more dominant with 6 of the top 7 spots. Chen
Meng tops the table, considerably ahead of the rest of the pack. Mima Ito now
occupies her career-best ranking of 2 and is followed by 5 Chinese women: Sun
Yingsha, Liu Shiwen, Wang Manyu, Ding Ning and Zhu Yuling.
Potential Candidates (L=Left-handed, R=Right-handed)
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Men
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Fan Zhendong (R)
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Ma Long (R)
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Xu Xin (L)
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Lin Gaoyuan (L)
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Liang Jingkun (R)
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Wang Chuqin
(L)
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Women
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Chen Meng (R)
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Sun Yingsha (R)
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Liu Shiwen (R)
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Wang Manyu (R)
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Ding Ning (L)
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Zhu Yuling (R)
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From these twelve
athletes Chinese selectors need to select three men and three women for the
respective team events, two men and two women for the respective singles events
and one pair for the mixed doubles event.
The easiest among
these choices is the choice for the Mixed Doubles pair. Since last year Xu Xin
and Liu Shiwen have been clearly presented as the leading Chinese Mixed Doubles
pair and they haven’t disappointed. The won the Mixed Doubles event at last
year’s World Championships at Budapest and ended that year by winning the
prestigious World Tour Grand Finals. In
fact, to the best of my knowledge, they are yet to be beaten**, even by a rival
Chinese pair. Interestingly, the only pair that have managed to trouble Xu Xin
and Liu Shiwen on a couple of occasions are the pair they are likely to face
off against in the gold medal match at the Olympics: Mima Ito and Jun Mizutani
of Japan.
The Men’s team event
is a straightforward choice too. Fan Zhendong, Ma Long and Xu Xin are still considerably
ahead of the rest in terms of their consistency, despite their recent surprise
losses to foreigners. That being said there have been question-marks over Ma
Long’s fitness over the last year. He managed to get himself fit barely in time
for last year’s World Championships (he managed to win the tournament without
dropping more than 1 game in any of his matches- but that’s a story for some
other day) and had to sit on the benches for most parts in the World Team Cup*
later in the year. In the final against Republic of Korea, Liang Jingkun had to
fill in for him and nearly made a big mess. He was clearly nervous and made far
too many unforced errors, which meant China lost the Doubles match, in which he
was paired with Xu Xin. In the third match, Liang Jingkun was staring at defeat
against Jeoung Youngsik, but somehow managed to pull through. China did manage
to win the tie, largely thanks to Fan Zhendong’s two singles wins. Lin Gaoyuan
is a nervous wreck, having famously lost matches from impossibly secure positions
on multiple occasions (he had 5 match points against Xu Xin at the 2017 World
Championships and 6 against Timo Boll at the 2017 World Cup, but somehow
managed to lose both the matches). Wang Chuqin is still relatively young and a
hothead and therefore is unlikely to be picked. This means, if Ma Long is not
fit for the Olympics the Chinese men are going to be in a spot of bother. I
have a feeling in this scenario they will still pick Liang Jingkun over Lin
Gaoyuan or Wang Chuqin, simply because he is a right handed player while the
other two are lefties. Why is that important? In doubles lefty-righty
combinations tend to have a slight edge as they can manage space much more
efficiently that righty-righty or lefty-lefty combinations. Assuming Fan
Zhendong plays two singles matches (see Box 1 for an explainer on the Olympic
Team Format) the Chinese team would therefore want a right-handed player to
pair up with the left-handed Xu Xin, who by virtue of being the best doubles player
alive has to play the doubles match.
Box 1
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The Olympic Team format was
first introduced in 2008 and has undergone slight modifications. A team
comprises of three players. A tie can potentially have five matches in a
predetermined sequence and the first team to win three matches wins the tie.
Before the match begins there is a toss and the winning captain gets to decide if they want to be the “A/B/C”
team or the “X/Y/Z” team. Then, the teams assign their players
these labels. Once fixed, these labels cannot be changed during
the course of the tie. The tie then follows the following order:
Match 1 (Doubles): Player
“B”/Player “C” v/s Player “Y”/Player “Z”
Match 2: Player “A” v/s Player
“X”
Match 3: Player “C” v/s Player
“Z”
Match 4: Player “A” v/s Player “Y”
Match 5: : Player “B” v/s
Player “X”
Notice that the reverse matches
(Match 4 and Match 5) are somewhat unbalanced for the two teams. For example,
in Match 4, which is a crucial match if your team is trailing 2-1, team ABC
gets to field the player who plays two singles matches (and possibly the best
singles player of the team), but the XYZ team has to field a player who plays
the doubles match. In other words, for the XYZ team, the player who plays two
singles (potentially the best singles player) cannot play their second
singles until Match 5, by which time it might already be too late. Therefore,
the toss can prove to be crucial in this format and that certainly makes
things more interesting. I feel this format demands that teams be balanced.
Teams that have one exceptional player but a not so special supporting cast
may struggle to come to terms with the format.
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The selection for the
women’s team event, in my opinion, will prove far trickier. I am fairly certain
of the identities of two of the three players on the women’s team. Chen Meng
has been the most consistent table tennis player over the last couple of years.
She is the winner of the last three World Tour Grand Finals and her consistency
is underlined by the fact that she is currently ranked 1 in the world and nearly 2500 ranking
points ahead of her nearest rival. Only a fool would dare to drop her. The
other spot would definitely go to Liu Shiwen, who finally managed to put her
demons to rest by winning her first World Championship title last April after
losing two finals and a semi-final in previous editions. She finished the year
on a high by winning her 5th Women’s World Cup title in November.
The third spot is slightly problematic . Chinese selectors, typically, prefer
to send experienced players over even higher ranked younger players for
high-pressure tournaments. Unfortunately
for them, two of their remaining senior players Ding Ning (the defending
Olympic Singles Champion) and Zhu Yuling have had a downturn over the last year
or so. In fact, Zhu Yuling had, to some extent, been sidelined by the Chinese
management. She was not among the 5 women selected for the singles event at
last year’s World Championship and was not even picked for the World Team Cup.
But she caused a stir by winning the Chinese internal qualifications
tournament, the “Marvellous 12” and secured her spot in the team for the World
Team Championships that now stand postponed. Ding Ning appears to be nursing an
injury and looks awfully out of sorts and uncharacteristically slow. Her lack
of agility was exposed by Mima Ito at this year’s Qatar Open, when the Japanese
teenager absolutely demolished her 4 games to nil, a performance made all the
more unbelievable by the score-line of the third game. It was 11-0. Therefore,
Chinese selectors might be tempted to look towards their younger stars: Sun
Yingsha (19) and Wang Manyu (20). Ever since their duel in the final of the
2017 World Junior Championshps, which Sun won, they have managed to firmly
establish themselves as an integral part of the Chinese contingent. While both
have tasted success on the World Tour winning a handful of titles, last year
(especially the second half) was particularly sweet for Sun Yingsha. Not only
did she manage to win three big events on the Tour (Japan Open, German Open and
Australian Open) but also managed to secure her first ever gold medal at the
Asian Championships, beating the newly crowned World Champion Liu Shiwen in the
final. Their recent form notwithstanding, I’ll be very surprised if either Sun
Yingsha or Wang Manyu make it to the Olympic team. I am fairly confident, if
she is fit, Ding Ning will get a chance to play her third Olympic Games,
primarily because of her vast experience and secondly, unlike Zhu Yuling, Sun
Yingsha and Wang Manyu, because she is a left hander and quite pivotal for the
opening doubles match. If Ding Ning is not fit, I have a feeling they will go
for experience over youth and pick Zhu Yuling.
It is an utter shame
that there is a cap of 2 athletes per Olympic Association in the singles
events, because it means some of the best table tennis players on Earth do not
get a chance to even participate. And as a corollary, it also means that the
event that is the unquestionable pinnacle of modern Table Tennis in terms of
prestige is far from the most competitive Table Tennis tournament in the world
(that title would probably go to the Table Tennis events at the Chinese
National Games)!
The Chinese selectors
face a formidable task while picking their 2 athletes for the men’s singles
event. The difficulty of the situation becomes clear when you realize that they
will have to drop either the reigning WR 1 (and three time Men’s World Cup
Winner) Fan Zhendong, or the current WR 2 (a World Cup Champion himself and an undeniable legend of the modern game) Xu Xin
or the GOAT (three-time World Champion and the defending Olympic Champion) Ma
Long. It truly is an impossible choice. Do you drop Fan Zhendong saying he is
23 years old and let his senior colleagues play? After all Ma Long was not
picked for the singles event at London 2012, despite being possibly the most
dominant player in the world at the time. On the other hand, Fan Zhendong has
been on top of the world rankings since the age of 16 and calling him young and
inexperienced would definitely be wrong. In fact, he has had a remarkable run (barring
that one blip against Ovtcharov) winning the World Cup, the World Tour Grand
Finals and Marvellous 12. Or do you drop Xu Xin arguing that he will also be
required to play the Mixed Doubles event? That would mean Xu Xin, an absolute
legend of the game, would finish his career without ever getting a shot at the
Olympic singles title. That would make him the only one from the trio of Zhang
Jike, Ma Long and himself to not get that chance. Moreover, after his early
exit at the World Championships last year, Xu Xin has been absolutely rock
solid until his surprise loss to Pitchford in March. Or do you drop Ma Long
saying he has already had his chance at Rio and given his fitness issues it
would be prudent let him concentrate on the team event? But die-hard Ma Long
fans would probably respond to this argument by pointing out that only last
year Ma Long made a miraculous comeback from a six-month long injury only to
win the World Championships without ever dropping more than one game. No matter
what the Chinese selectors do, they are going to end up breaking many, many
hearts.
What would I do if I
were Liu Guoliang (the CTTA President and a Grand Slam Winner himself)? As much
as I would love to see Ma Long play and attempt to become the only man to win a
“Double Grand Slam” (1 Grand Slam = 1 World Championships + 1 World Cup + 1
Olympic Singles), I would still pick Fan Zhendong and Xu Xin, as the two of
them hold a slight competitive edge over Ma Long (based on recent form) and as
I said before Ma Long has had his chance.
A couple of seasons
ago, it would have been a nightmare to pick 2 Chinese women for the singles
event, for Ding Ning, Chen Meng, Liu Shiwen and Zhu Yuling were all more or
less evenly matched. But over the course the last couple of years Chen Meng has
managed to pull herself heads and shoulders above the rest and Liu Shiwen has
all but cemented her spot by winning the two most high-octane tournaments of
2019- the World Championships and the Women’s World Cup. For all their exploits
over the last two years, Sun Yingsha and Wang Manyu, aged 19 and 20
respectively, are unlikely to be selected to carry the hopes of 1.4 billion
people on their shoulders. For me, Chen Meng and Liu Shiwen are the clear
frontrunners to play the singles event at Tokyo, which means, unfortunately, Ding
Ning will not get a chance to join Deng Yaping and Zhang Yining in the elite club
of women who are Double Grand Slam Champions.
While the selection
for the women’s singles event appears relatively straightforward, there is one
potential thorn in their side and yes, it’s Mima Ito again. For the time being
the men don’t have a similar problem as Fan Zhendong, Xu Xin and Ma Long are
ranked one, two and three respectively. Currently the world rankings have been
frozen. But whenever international Table Tennis resumes, if the three of them
keep occupying the top three spots (which is highly likely), no matter who get
selected for the Olympics, the top two seeds at the men’s singles event will be
Chinese, meaning they won’t cross swords till the finals. But this is not
guaranteed for the women, because Mima Ito is currently ranked 2 in the world.
If the Chinese selectors pick Chen Meng and Liu Shiwen and the rankings stay
constant till the Olympics the two of them will be seeded 1 and 3 for the women’s
singles event. This would make things very interesting for us neutrals, because
now there would be a 50% chance that Chen Meng and Liu Shiwen will be in the
same half of the draw and meet in the semis to give us what would be the first
non China-China women’s singles final at the Olympics since Athens 2004. But
for Chinese selectors, this would probably be their worst nightmare come true.
How will they respond? I guess they don’t really have a choice. The reason
being the rankings. Mima Ito is followed by a train of five Chinese women.
Therefore, no matter who they pick, their 2 players will be seeded 1 and 3 if Chen
Meng is one of them or 2 and 3 in any other scenario. In both cases the problem
persists. My guess is we are going to see Chen Meng and Liu Shiwen in the women’s
singles event at Tokyo.
After having spent
more than 3000 words my answer to the hottest Table tennis question of the year
is as follows:
Mixed Doubles: Liu
Shiwen, Xu Xin
Men’s Team: Fan
Zhendong, Xu Xin, Ma Long
Women’s Team: Chen
Meng, Liu Shiwen, Ding Ning
Men’s Singles: Fan
Zhendong, Xu Xin
Women’s Singles: Chen
Meng, Liu Shiwen
The only question left
to answer is: “Will the Olympic Games happen (ever again)?”
*The 2019 World Team Cup, held in the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, was
a test event for the Olympics)
** Turns out, Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen were beaten last year once, not by Ito and Mizutani, but by Wong Chun Ting and Doo Hoi Kem at the Korea Open.
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