For those of us who love table tennis – its intricacy and intelligence, speed and subtlety – it was a joy to be in Beijing last month when the sport stood in the spotlight of the Olympic Games. Many of us have spent lifetimes enduring the mirth of those who reckon it is not much of a sport.

Whiff-whaff. Even the name of one of its earlier incarnations seems to mock the enterprise: a diversion for British aristocrats before asking: “Anyone for (lawn) tennis?”

The sport only really came of age when it was taken up by Mao as a cost-effective means of bolstering his leadership. The Chairman decreed ping-pong the national sport of China in the 1950s, something that proved crucial to sustaining his legitimacy.

Today table tennis endures a split and highly surreal existence as an obsession for one fifth of the world’s population and an occasional game for almost everyone else. Only in the past few years has it attained something approaching cult status in the West – particularly in London and New York – where it is played dreamily by novelists, poets, advertising moguls and other members of the intelligentsia. City boys, too, have got in on the act, with tables perched alongside the trading floors of hedge funds.

Table tennis coming home in 2012? Technically yes, but it is unlikely that the sport will ever find a spiritual home quite like China.

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