Table tennis A Little Bit of its History

This game is extremely popular, and though it is hard, it is certainly a lot of fun, since the difficulty in playing this game is itself a challenge. And who doesn't like a challenge? If you are a little interested in history, you will find this quite interesting.

- No one can actually pin point a date and state that "this is when the game actually began." No one knows how it did, exactly, but common knowledge gives its opinion: let us say that around the end of 1800, a well off family called their friends for a tennis party, and they even started out on the game in the tennis lawn. They hit a few rounds, and when they thought that a little ice lemonade would do well to their parched throats, -as it is inevitable in England- it started to rain.

So maybe, just one of them took up a paper, crunched it up into a ball and with something to pass off as a bat, started to fling and hit it to the other side of the dinner table. The others, having nothing to do, were mesmerized at the view, and they eventually joined in. And lo! Table Tennis was born.

- The game has certain rules which are pretty easy to understand. The server has to rest the ball on his palm before flinging it up. Then he hits it, and lets it bounce before it clears the net. Then, on the other side, the ball has to bounce off again before the opponent could hit it. This time, the opponent would strike directly, and the ball should not bounce on his side. Thus the game is extremely fast and one needs to have a very sharp reflex to play this game.

- If one player makes a wrong hit, his opponent scores. And the one to score 21 first is the winner! This game became less popular within a few years, until a group of interested people decided to resuscitate the game in the 1920s. And in 1926, the International Table Tennis Association was formed.

- This game found a lot of support in the Asian countries, and in Japan it is quite a raging sport. They dominated the game in the 50s and the 60s, but the Chinese beat them soon enough and now they play, neck to neck.

The game has evolved only a little in the last many years, and the vellum bats have been replaced with ping pong paddles. Table Tennis is not only a fun and hard game to play, but it is also quite enjoyable to watch.
Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information on table tennis checkout his recommended websites.