Hi. I'm Alois Rosario from PingSkills. Today we're having a look
at the new table tennis balls. There's been a lot of discussion around these
balls
and whether they're going to be any good. Today we're just going to road test one of them
and just see how it pulls up.
Today we've got a very small sample. We've only got one of the
plastic balls so all our results will be a little bit
skewed by the small number. Let's have a look firstly
at the hardness of the ball, so I've got a
new plastic ball and I've got a Nittaku, probably my favourite of
the old celluloid balls. So let's just
press that in, putting a fair amount of
pressure there. Nittaku's are always pretty good
Putting a similar amount of pressure and I can actually put probably
a little bit more pressure on the plastic and it's holding up really well.
So the hardness is quite good. So as far as hardness goes
I think that's come up really well. Next we're going to test for the roundness
so again we've got the Nittaku and the plastic ball.
Firstly with the Nittaku, and
Looks pretty good there.
That's one way,
and the other way
Looks pretty good. Looks really round.
Now we'll have a look at the
plastic ball. Oooh!
Don't know whether you can see that. Big Wobble!
That way's not too bad. Bit of a wobble there.
Big wobble there.
So as far as the roundness
not so good.
Now there's been a lot of talk about the sound of the ball so firstly
we'll play within the Nittaku ball just so you can have a listen.
So that's the
familiar sweets sound of a table tennis ball.
This is the plastic ball. As you can hear
a little bit more high pitched and to the
table tennis player that's played a lot with the celluloid ball
it does sound like it's cracked.
However I think
after a little bit of time we probably won't notice that difference in sound.
I'll do a little bit of serving now with both
the Nittaku and the plastic ball and just see if I can feel any
differences.
With the Nittaku, with the plastic
within the Nittaku
with the plastic
with the Nittaku
with the plastic
So Alois, just looking at your serves there,
it seems to me that the plastic ball was gripping more
on the table and actually slowing down when it hit the table, did you feel that?
Yeah, I'm not sure whether it's the gripping or maybe just because it is a
bit harder that it's bouncing up a bit higher.
I wonder if we can do a smoothness test
so what about if I give you
the balls in your hand and then you can just rub them and just see
what you think. All right, give me a random ball in each hand
Yep. Okay to me
that one feels smoother. It's the Nittaku
I think that Nittaku is smoother and that's slightly rougher.
Let me try you.
See if you can get it. Okay close your eyes.
Yep.
I don't feel a lot of difference. No, pretty much the same?
Maybe that one's rougher or grippier
That one's grippier, that's the plastic ball.
I think it is. Okay, maybe I'm convinced.
So after doing some bounce tests
they're pretty close a but you can see they do go out of sync
a little bit. If anything we feel like the
plastic ball bounces a little bit higher. So when we
also did the test with two Nittaku balls
they stayed in sync a lot longer than
the Nittaku and the plastic ball. The other thing I noticed is because
the plastic ball isn't as round, it tends to bounce
a little bit in different directions.
It's changing direction a little bit
when it's bouncing. That will be because of the lack of roundness.So we're going to
do a bit of a test now. We're going to play with
both the plastic ball and the
Nittaku ball but we're going to do it without the sound
because I think the sound does affect your judgment
and your perception of which ball it is.
So let's see now if you can choose and pick
which one is the plastic ball and which one is the celluloid
Nittaku ball
So Alois, is the plastic ball good or bad?
Well I think the biggest
drawback with these two balls is that that plastic ball
just hasn't got the roundness and that was affecting
the hitting a little bit, the touch and just getting used to the
the feel and also the bounce
fractionally. Apart from that though, I think it
performed really well so it's hard, it's not like there are some soft spots on it
it feels pretty hard and even all the way around and
it it seemed to
fly pretty well.
I found with short pushing that I had more
control with the Nittaku but once we used it
for a little while you could adjust so I don't think that's going to be a big
problem. No. And I think table tennis players
are able to adapt well. I think
the main things will be, firstly getting used to the sound of it.
Secondly, hopefully the manufacturing will get a little bit better so that the
roundness is
better. We've only got one ball so maybe
that was just a dodgy ball? I think
in the long run, you probably won't know the difference in six months time and
everyone will just think that table tennis is exactly the same.
I think even in one month. When the new ball comes in, one month later
no one will notice the difference. That's my personal opinion.
Hopefully that's the case. Hopefully the manufacturer will get it
right and table tennis will go
on.