I took a trip to the English Open yesterday with a clubmate and what a day of Table Tennis it was.

Found the venue no problem at all. Really good signposting off the M1, got parked right across the road from the EIS for £3. Good to see they weren't ripping people off on the parking.

We got there nice and early to see Paul Drinkhall beat Thomas Tregler in the U21 2nd round. We weren't overly impressed with Paul to be honest, he would play one or two really good points then go flat for a while before playing well for another couple. Rinse and repeat. But he won through to the next round which was good to see.

With that match over and a short wait until the next matches on court we took a trip out to the stand/catering area. I bought myself a Timo Boll Spirit blade (I'll save the explanation and review for another blog post!) and we had a bite to eat. The trade stalls were good with a lot of clothing going for cheap prices. If I didn't already have about 10 table tennis shirts I definitely would have bought a couple. The food from the catering stand was bland and overpriced. £4.30 for a baked potato with beans. Enough said.

So onto the table tennis. There were four tables on Saturday and we were lucky enough to have 2nd row seats right next to Table 1, the show table. First up was some women's doubles action. Now I am not a big fan of women's table tennis to be honest. Maybe it is because a lot of the women I see play in the UK are quite defensive and use pimples and I just don't like that style of table tennis. I have to say though that I was extremely impressed by all of the women's matches that we saw. The doubles were excellent and warmed us up for the mens doubles.

We were excited to see the mens doubles as they featured Timo Boll and Christian Suss playing against Ma Lin and Xu Xin. Both my friend and I are huge Timo Boll fans and were really looking forward to seeing him play. Unfortunately the match was a complete walkover for the Chinese pairing with the only highlight for the germans being when Suss played a behind the back shot from close to the table and they won the point. Ah well, we would see Timo play again later in the day anyway.

The day continued on with some fantastic table tennis with Knight/Drinkhall putting up a good show against the number one ranked doubles pairing from Japan but eventually going out 1-4. Drinkhall was then on again later in the afternoon but never really turned up, losing in the third round of the U21 mens singles to a very good player from Korea who actually went on to win the tournament.

There were two players who we had really come to see in Sheffield and we got to see them both on the show court right in front of us in the Men's Quarter Finals. First up was Michael Maze playing against Xu Xin, a penholder from China. We had seen Maze play in the third round and beat a Portugese player without playing at his best and were hoping to see him reproduce some of the form that he showed in winning the European Championships earlier in the month. We were disappointed. Maze started very slowly and lost the first set 3-11. We feared the worst for him. However, in a startling about turn he then came out in the second set and won 11-3! The next set would be all important and it went the way of the Chinese player, 11-9. It was a very close set and Maze showed his frustration in losing it by throwing his bat into the net. He got a yellow card for his troubles and more importantly lost a lot of respect from me. There's just no need to display such petulance in a big match, especially when you are a pro table tennis player. So anyway, Maze lost his head after that and was never really in the match again losing the next two sets game 6 and game 9.

Straight after the Maze match it was Timo Bolls turn on court against the number 58 ranked player in the world from Japan Seiya Kishikawa. He had seemed off his game all day, doing nothing in the doubles we saw in the morning, struggled at first against Suss in the 3rd Round of the Men's Singles losing the first two sets before battling through to win 4-2 but we were confident he would beat Kishikawa (why I don't know seeing as the Japanese player had beaten Chen Qi earlier!).

It was all going well in the first set and he won it game 7. Then it just all fell apart. Kishikawa was way too consistent for Boll, playing some great shots and keeping the ball on the table. Boll was missing by small margins, getting edges of bats, top of the nets, missing the ball entirely, it just wasn't coming together for him. He was 3-1 down and struggling. Then he found his groove. Everything started going on, the backhand that had been non-existent in the first 4 sets suddenly looked world class and he was firing on all cylinders to bring up a 7th set. During the break between sets my friend and I said that he needed a good start to the set and it would be all good. He won the first two points on Kishikawa's serve to go 2-0 up and we thought it was all good. Then he lost the next 8 points. Unbelievable. Whether the effort of coming back from 3-1 down drained him or not only he can say but he fell back into the bad habits of sets two to four. He was 10-4 down and started to fight back a bit at that point but lost 11-6. Gutted.

So with the clock reading 8pm it was time for us to hit the road and head back home to Manchester having seen a fantastic days table tennis. The ETTA did a great job putting on the event in my opinion. The conditions and facilities were top class and I can't wait for the event to come back to the UK in 2011. It has certainly inspired me to work on my game a lot harder and try and move up to the next level.