A New League And A New Hope

Ultimate Table Tennis may have created a lot of excitement, but the league has to overcome A WHOLE LOT OF CHALLENGES if it has to reach out to the public at large.

- Amol Karhadkar

Virtually every sportsperson — or even an aficionado — would have played table tennis at some point in his/her life. Still, table tennis is far from being a competitive sport in India. It’s perhaps the curse of being perceived as a recreational sport. It requires a revolution of sorts to change this perception in the country.

The players and lovers of the sport would be hoping that the CEAT Ultimate Table Tennis — a six-team franchise-based league that has just kicked off — would play a radical role in changing the perception of the sport, from being a mere recreational one to a marquee sport. Despite the optimism of the table tennis fraternity, it’s time to conduct a SWOT analysis of sorts:

STRENGTHS

The biggest strength is the league’s potential to reach the masses. Despite Indian table tennis players’ limited success at the international level, thanks to its popularity among amateurs, the sport does drive a lot of people. The league, despite its various lacunae, is the first real attempt to channelise this interest. If a layman watches Ultimate Table Tennis on his television for at least a quarter of the three-hour duration every evening for 18 days, that itself would mean a huge success for the league. However, 11 Even Sports’ top brass, the promoters of the league— they include twoof India’s greatest players, Kamlesh Mehta and Neeraj Bajaj, and Vita Dani, who entered the fraternity as a parent but has taken over the mantle of reviving the fortunes of the game — jolly well realise that the task is easier said than done.

WEAKNESSES