Around 100 years since the ‘ping pong craze’ swept the country and 50 years since table tennis audiences filled Wembley Stadium and the Albert Hall and the sport was a regular feature of newsreel reports, a special ‘hard bat’ friendly international match has been organised to take place between veteran players representing England and the USA in Manchester on Friday 9th June, supported by Manchester Millennium Veterans Games Committee.
Amongst the Americans will be the legendary Marty Reisman, 70, who, once a top world class player himself, is one of the last (still active) links with the ‘golden age’ of the sport pre and post Second World War. In 1949 he won the English Open Championships at Wembley, beating one of the all time greats Victor Barna, 5 times world champion, in the final. And at the Manchester’s G-Mex Centre in 1998, he clinched the classic encounter of the World Veterans Championships in defeating a man who will be playing for the English hard bat team, Henry Buist (Kent), now a very fit 66 and still an excellent player.
Known as ‘The Money Player’ (he has written a book about himself with this title) or the table tennis hustler, owing to his propensity to play challenge matches with high stakes, Reisman is still issuing challenges of up to $15,000, provided his opponent plays with a hard bat. Hard bats – pimpled rubber on a wooden blades – were used by almost all players from the 1920’s through to the late 1950’s, when a sandwich of pimples on sponge took over and has remained predominant ever since. England’s only native produced world champions, Fred Perry in 1929 and Johnny Leach (1949 and 1951) used pimpled rubber. Howard Jacobson’s most recent novel, The Mighty Walzer, is about playing table tennis in 1950’s Manchester just before the introduction of ‘sponge’, and he plans to attend this special match on 9th June. Many pundits consider that sponge, because of the speed and spin it produces, spoilt table tennis as a spectacle, which was at its best in its pimple/hard bat heyday. Hard bat play is still popular in the USA.
Playing for the English veterans team alongside Buist, will be Denis Neale (Yorkshire), who although starting in the hard bat era took his six national singles titles after it, and England international from Manchester, Jeff Ingber. The other veteran American players will be John Tannerhill and Steve Berger. The match, to be played at Manchester Sports Development Centre, will commence at 7pm. There will also be a hard bat event in the Manchester Veterans Championships taking place at the same venue over the following weekend (10th/11th June), which the Americans are anticipated to enter. For further information contact Tony Meredith, organiser, Tel. 01253 397589.
England’s Alex Perry (Devon) and Carl Prean (Isle of Wight) are fighting for the last chance 3 Sydney Olympic places at the Final World Olympic Qualification Tournament taking place in Seville, Spain, from 25-28 May.
Ken Muhr, ETTA Information Officer, Tel. 01424 722525 Fax. 01424 422103.