45. China's Ping Pong Power: Episode 1
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The Appeal of Table Tennis
Table tennis became a proper sport under the watchful eye of an extraordinary British aristocrat, Ivan Montague. He had formed the International Table Tennis Federation and become its first president. The great novelist Howard Jacobson grew up playing table tennis in Manchester in the 1950s. Though Montague had formalised the sport, the game still felt amateurish. It's graceless, you're on your hands and knees with your bum in the air, searching for the whiteboard between every point. Because if someone's going to put the ball past somewhat and the ball always, always runs underneath the seats, the benches.
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