With 300 days to go to Birmingham 2022, Australian table tennis future looks bright

📷 | Australia's gold medallists Melissa Tapper and bronze medallist Andrea McDonnell at Gold Coast 2018

Today marks 300 days to go until the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Commonwealth Games, which will be held in Birmingham, UK from 28 July to 8 August 2022. After the success of the recent Olympic and Paralympic Games, Australian table tennis athletes are already focusing on the next major multisport event, taking stock of their experience in Tokyo and mapping out their journey towards Birmingham.

Six-time Olympian Jian Fang Lay’s performance was the obvious highlight of the Olympic Games for an Australian team who was catapulted straight onto the biggest sporting stage after 18 months without international competition. 

The 48-year-old Victorian won fans over by matching Australia's best result ever in the Women’s Singles event at the Games, winning three matches in a row and eventually losing in the round of 32, but only after beating a former European champion and world top-30 opponent along the way. 

Lay will now lead a strong Australian women’s team which has justified medal ambitions for the Commonwealth Games, but according to National Head Coach John Murphy our male players have a chance to contend at the top level as well.

“Over the last three years we’ve always looked at Birmingham 2022 as our chance to put our foot forward and possibly win some medals. One year out, we feel like we’re in a good place,” Murphy said.

“Jian finished as the third highest ranked of all Commonwealth female players in Tokyo, so that’s a good indication of where we stand on the women’s side.

“But also on the men's side, we’re one of the top-4 to top-8 nations. So we hope to get to the quarterfinals and then play for semis and possibly a medal. That’s certainly our goal,” he said.

With all six of our Tokyo Olympians having also participated in the home Commonwealth Games in 2018, chemistry and experience are a strength of our national team. But Murphy expects other young talents to challenge the more established players and make a credible bid for inclusion in the squad over the next months.

“Places are up for grabs at the moment and our athletes will definitely prove themselves. We’ll probably see some emerging players coming through and, combined with our stalwarts senior guys who have been at that level for the last few years, we’ll be able to put together the best possible team to target medals in Birmingham,” he said.

Table Tennis Australia has recently modified the nomination criteria for Birmingham 2022, with a National Selection Panel tasked with selecting three out of four players who will represent Australia at the Games for each gender, and the last team spots assigned through a qualification tournament. This is a departure from the previous approach used by TTA, whereby the vast majority of positions on the team were determined by qualification events.

“We’re trying to bring ourselves in line with the other nations we’re competing against,” Murphy explained. 

“This new approach also rewards success over a longer period of time, as the players have a chance to prove themselves over multiple events and get rewarded for getting results on a more consistent basis. 

“But we also want our athletes to experience that qualification element as well, so that aspect is going to be maintained for the last spot.”

The new criteria for Birmingham 2022 will also give Table Tennis Australia an opportunity to adopt a more holistic approach to selection, taking into account the other events on the Commonwealth Games program such as doubles, mixed doubles and also the team event.

“The qualification tournament is traditionally based only around someone winning the singles event,” Murphy added. “But there are four disciplines at the Commonwealth Games so we wanted to have some flexibility around giving our team the best chances to win medals in Birmingham.”

With final team selection not due until May 2022, Murphy hopes to take advantage of two major preparation events on the road to Birmingham to get the team in the best possible shape. 

The Oceania Championships penciled in for late February (which will also assign qualification quotas) and the World Team Championships in China (in late May) will hopefully give the Australian team that exposure to international competition that our athletes lacked in the lead up to the Tokyo Games.

“Especially with the World Team Championships, at that stage we should have our full team for Birmingham in place and that’s a great opportunity for us to compete against the best nations in the world, so close to the Commonwealth Games,” Murphy said.

On the para-table tennis side, the Australian team will have another opportunity to shine after the unprecedented success they experienced in Tokyo. In August 2019, para-table tennis was announced as one of three additional sports to be added to the Birmingham 2022 programme, although fewer classes will be contested compared to the Paralympic Games. 

Australia will aim to improve on its good performance at the 2018 Games, where Melissa Tapper and Andrea McDonnell won gold and bronze respectively in the Women's Single class 6–10. Birmingham 2022 will also be an opportunity for 7-time Paralympian Danni di Toro to potentially compete at the Commonwealth Games, as the class 3-5 will be included in the program for the first time since 2010.

National Head Coach (Para) Alois Rosario said 2022 will be another big year for Australian para-table tennis, with both the Commonwealth Games and the World Championships in the calendar. 

“After our success in Tokyo, you get to a stage where you ask yourself - how do we maintain this level? How do we improve? We need to keep feeding the fire.

“But we also look at those events as more great opportunities to continue promoting para-table tennis to the community,” he said.