[adham]

@Fastest115

With all due respect I do not agree with you. Let me explain why:
40mm Ball: the idea of a bigger ball exists now for at least 28 years. In JApan a 44 mm balls was already in play before 1988 (20 yerars ago). The ITTF President from 1987 to 1994 pushed for a bigger ball during his mandate, then Mr. Xu of China did the same when he was elected in 1995, and eventually the 40 mm ball was approved in the year 2000 (92% in favour), after it was defeated in 1999 (74.5% in favour). So it took more than 20 years to make this change, which by the way was always favoured by the majority but not by more than 75% of the voting associations.

11 Points: I remember in 1989 having the North American Championships played with 9-poinbts games. For almost 30 years there has been a push to reduce the length of the Games from 21 to 15, or 13, or 11, or 9 or even 7. This was not new. It was proposed to the ITTF by the Athletes Commission (not by an association) and received more than 90% in favour in 2001 (or 2002). It was preceded by 2 years of experiments.

Open Service: This is a perennial rule of the ITTF that appears at every single AGM. The current rule was finally passed after several years of debate and arguments about the wording. The problem was never the intent iof the rule (clear view of the service to the receiver), the argument was always on the wording and the control of the rule.

Glue Ban: As you may know VOC Glue was already banned in 1993, but then the ITTF rversed its decision 6 months later mainly because of the lack of testing equipment. Some say because some associations and players put pressure, but I do not believe so. 15 years later the rule finally passed.

So, as you can see, in order to make a significant change it takes many many years. At the moment within the ITTF there is no such move. I would know if there were.

There are not too many changes in ITTF rules. Bascially 4 important changes in the last 20 years, most of them in the period 2000-2004. The low friction level in 2006. This is not a lot if we want to be progressive and move forward as a sport. I always say: "If we had miilions of spectators, we refused sponsors, we were on every TV screen, our athletes were recognized in the streets, and we were the top sport in the wordl, then we would NOT need to change anything at all".