Table Tennis Books

Lionel Messi, Rafael Nadal, Wayne Rooney, Tiger Woods — significant riches aside, what do these men have in common? Natural sporting ability that mere mortals such as you and I can only dream about? Not so, says Matthew Syed, the Times columnist and three-time Commonwealth table tennis champion, whose book, Bounce, challenges the idea that top sportsmen — as well as experts in other fields — enjoy God-given gifts that the rest of us lack. David Beckham was not born with the ability to take a brilliant free kick, Roger Federer is not blessed with extraordinarily sharp reactions: these skills were developed as a result of hard work and practice. The first part of Bounce demolishes the idea that talent is the key to success. The path to the top, Syed argues, is a combination of opportunity — being in the right place at the right time — and hard work. Syed uses his own experience to demonstrate the importance of opportunity: his parents, neither of whom was a table tennis player, decided to buy a tournament-specification table for Syed and his brother; both came to love the sport, spurring each other on. The head sports coach at their school was a table tennis fanatic and he invited them to join a local table tennis club. The importance of this club cannot be overstated. For a period in the 1980s, Syed’s neighbourhood produced a disproportionate number of the UK’s outstanding table tennis players — six of them lived on the Syeds’ street.

Written by one of the sports livelist authors, Tim Boogan 375 Pages of text and photographs, several references to English players of the era

Biography following the career of one of the game's all time greats. By Jens Fellke

Written by Jenny Heaton. With over 40 years of table tennis experience at all levels. This guide provides sound practical advice that will help make you a better player whether you are learning the basic skills or moving onto more advanced techniques.