You're so wrong. I like Ma Long. But in your video, at around 1:25, you slowed down the video when Ma Long served. It was obvious he raised his hand as high as his face, and the ball departed from there. You said: It is high enough. The umpire was wrong. But you are the person who is wrong. It is a biased video clip.
Well coach, this ML service is quite borderline. 15,25 cm? Very close! Palm or fingers? Vertical? Don't know what ML tried to do when executing this service. I guess he didn't expect the umpire to go for call, but big surprise! My advice: use services that are far away from beeing suspicious in any way, especially when it's a close situation. The umpire will not change his mind, the point is lost and your pulse is at least 20% higher. And don't test how far you can go in using the "grey area" what the umpire allows.
I completely agree with you. Moreover, if we saw the entire match, we’d see that Ma Long tossed the ball like that 3 times and the other cases were much worse than the shown one. So we can see, it’s very subjective.
Part of the problem is inconsistent calls by umpires. Few are strict, following the rule book.. But the large majority don't, and let marginally illegal serves slide. The problem is that this conditions players to think that their illegal serves are legal. And when they encounter a strict (but correct) umpire, they will be very bewildered that their serve which they've done 100s of times without any call, is now being called illegal. It also makes it difficult to tell if this umpire is being legit or not. Additionally, from the POV of the umpire, it can be very difficult to tell. If the hand is flat during the toss, but immediately after the fingers curl, it covers the ball from the POV of the umpire, and he/she won't be able to tell if its illegal or not. IMO, players should really make sure that their service is completely visible to umpires. Otherwise, its just tempting a strict umpire to make life difficult for them.
May I suggest a Serve Cam computer that would use tournament organizer cameras at various angles to record, process and decide if a serve was illegal. Take the human out of the equation to eliminate favoritism.
Would that 1 cm make a difference to the serve? Rules should be there to allow fair play. Not hamper technique and skill. Vertical this vs non vertical. You enforce it strictly with technology ie 90deg toss, you might as well not play table tennis. Many rules were added simply because few can beat the China players.
The case of Ma Long that you presented, the umpire call was correct and it is a fault serve, the ball did not leave his palm for 16 cm. However, I really wish you showcased the more recent calls the were specifically geared towards the Chinese team in the World Team Cup 2018 and the WTTTC 2018, the umpires deliberately would call faults on the Chinese players, while other players like Ovtcharov and Boll would get away with it! I also saw one of the Hong Kong's team players argue with the umpire over a fault service call when the player was facing the other way of the umpire and he still called a fault, the players argument was, "how can you tell its a fault when you cannot see?" and the unpire answered "well I can tell", I cannot remember which tournament this happened! it could be the german or the qatar open this year
The only illegal thing he and many players do is to not throw the ball near vertically. He never hides the ball or tosses the ball with his finger or anything else.
Ma Long, like many of the servers other than Timo Boll, who has what you will call a 'textbook' table tennis serve. He does tend to toss the ball somewhat behind while contacting the ball with his paddle. This will no doubt cause a number of plausible service faults: 1. The ball will likely be hiding from the forward momentum of his body while the ball was tossed a little backwards. 2. If the toss from his palm of his hand, the ball was not stationary, or being slightly moved as the toss was being imparted. There will be more rotations generated from the momentum which will give him more RPM prior to hitting the ball. 3. Also when the body is hiding the ball part way with the toss, the umpire can also not being able to see clearly where the ball was being struck, either the contact point could be (a) below the table, (b) inside the table, or (c) at the side of the table, which each one of them is a foul on merit. Too many players are not being called for illegal serves. The onus is solely based on the umpire calling it out correctly and exactly to the letter of the ITTF rule book. They are calling more now than ever before, but more is needed from the Regulations Body of the ITTF to really do something about them.
It's easier to violate throwing height rule during backhand serve among amateur player. and yes, standard of umpire for ITTF are getting worse as there is no pre-requisite that umpire need to be a former player, which, they should be.
Good information. The correct thing would be that you put in the description the link of the original video since I saw it and it explains in detail the failures at the serve.
thank you very much for this informative demonstration ! :) It's crazy how many of my " common service " is in fact by rules a violation :D But on Street table tennis my friends call my KILLER Servant! :D But seriously they should stop it... Some make sense but the hidden serves or the under table serves were great service weapons for a long time ; I ' m not a friend that they put so much restriction on the service in Pro level nowa days... :/
Calderano always hides the ball with his head. When he gets a warning, he starts to argue and then does the same serve again. If the umpire is weak, he will not give a penalty and so Calderano will keep on serving illegally during the whole match.
regarding throwing angle: Normally 60° would be the minimum angle for an allowed serve. This is at least the official position of the german tt foundation and it agrees with the pictures from the "ittf handbook for match officials" even though there no exact values are given iirc. BTW I think the umpires call on Ma Long was correct, he lifts his hand to his face but throws the ball only very little from there. Also how "harsh" an umpire will gauge serves will depend on the guidelines set forth by the referee for this tournament or competition.
One point: "near" vertical could mean that vertical is illegal, because it is saying to throw the ball at an angle that is anything other than vertical. This is just simple logic. If this was law, it would allow you to throw the ball subjectively because no definition of angle is in the law.
I agree that the call of fault service for Ma Longs serve in the case study is incorrect but believe it was still a foul serve for the ball moving backwards towards the body. ' not even near straight'?!
1:10 Even if it was high enough, he was cupping the ball with his hand. 2:19 is also illegal btw. Not high enough. He almost drops the ball from that height and moves his hand downwards.
Do you have to serve from the left corner? I only ever see right handed players serving from the left corner of their side of the table Can you serve from the right corner or further left than the left edge of the table (as long as its behind the end of the table still)?
English is not his native language for sure. And even if he is understandable, he know that and puts full subtitles on his videos to make sure everyone can understand what he says. That's quite rude to call him on his accent when he takes the time and effort to create al this content for free on youtube AND takes measures so that his accent won't prevent people from understanding what he says.
Ma Long's hand keep moving upwards after he throws the ball, so there is less separation between the hand and the ball. Had he stopped his hand motion right after the throw, you could clearly see that the ball travelled enough. But it shouldn't matter! And that's where the lack of playing experience of the umpire tells. Or the lack of understanding of optics, which is crucial for an umpire.
No la lanza hacia arriba, la arrastra. Al final la suelta pero es tarde. He didnt throw the ball, he drag the ball. At the last time he release the ball but its late. Fault. Saludos de Bolivia
If the player's body is at the side of the table but the ball does not cross the imaginary lines of the table (the horizontal end line explained on the video and the vertical lines of each side) the serve is legal. But if both the body and the ball cross the imaginary lines, then the serve is illegal.
Excellent shown sir,we can learn lots about services, many times many players do illegal serve and umpire knows nothing about this and many times umpire wrong players correct, but in India 70% of players playing by illegal service, umpires here are not strict.
Let's hope they don't allow technology and crazy rules to ruin this beautiful game of technique, dexterity and skill. Just saw the ruling of face blocking ball in match between Ma Long and Jeoung. This rule should apply only if the contact between the ball and blade is blocked. And only if the opponent makes a challenge. Why is the umpire getting into the spotlight? And yes. There seems to be a conspiracy to disadvantage the Chinese players. This is a game where the rules are tweaked to slow the game down. Very soon, you have to serve a simple service cos others just can't read the service. Please do not spoil this game like what VAR has done to football. Use the technology wisely.
