Out to prevent a Chinese takeaway

The journey to London 2012 for Britain’s No 1 table tennis player takes in Budapest, Sheffield, Luxembourg and Doha.

Paul Drinkhall also has to fit into his schedule playing for the top side in Italy’s professional league.

These are busy times for the 21-year-old Middlesbrough-born, Rotherham resident, who is the nation’s best hope of ending the Chinese stranglehold on the sport.

Such is the expectation on Chinese players at any international table tennis tournament that an inability to win a clean sweep of gold medals is seen as failure.

As this country’s No 1 since his mid-teens and a national champion at every age group from Under-10s onwards, Drinkhall can empathise.

He is the man the country will look to to deliver at the Olympics, but before then he has to be on his game almost every week to ensure he merely gets to London.

For being the top-ranked Briton in the world is no guarantee that he will earn selection as one of two singles players and three team players to a home Olympics.

Drinkhall knows this all too well after coming up one game short amid a racquet controversy four years ago. He was young enough to overcome a farcical issue over the thickness of his bat that by the time of the Beijing Games had nonsensically become a redundant matter.

But as he flies out to Hungary on his 22nd birthday on January 16 for the first qualifying event, he has no intention of letting external forces dictate his Olympic destiny.

“I know I can beat the guys I have to beat to qualify, it’s just a case of going out there and putting the wins together in a tournament,” says Drinkhall.

“It’s pretty much non-stop from now until the Olympics and it’s a tough road. But I’ve been No 1 for quite a while now in Britain and I feel I am the best.

“That gives me confidence and it’s unlikely I’ll be playing any of these guys in the qualification rounds apart from at the nationals in Sheffield (March 2-4).

“We also have the European Olympic qualifier in Luxembourg in April and then the world qualifier in Doha in May. With the added pressure of it being an Olympics, anything can happen.

“So my job is to be prepared as best I can be.

“If you’re confident in your game then you should be able to handle it, and that’s what I’m banking on.”

Britain’s No 1 he may be but on the world stage Drinkhall is ranked only 143rd.

He knows there are areas of his game to improve, particularly his concentration – which for someone who has to focus on a tiny white ball flying across the net at a high velocity is not an easy weakness to admit.

“Sometimes my concentration has let me down,” he says.

“I kept falling into ruts where I’d have 10 minutes of practising stuff I shouldn’t be doing, being too safe and things like that.

“Now I’m making sure I play the ball rather than the opponent.

“I’ve worked on that and that’s a lot better. I can now focus on improving little things in my game and that’s a big help.”

Drinkhall has big tournament experience despite missing out in Beijing.

He was a wide-eyed teenager at the 2006 Commonwealth Games and admits now he was over-awed by the occasion.

Four years later, he went to Delhi a more determined individual and came back with a team silver and a bronze with his mixed doubles partner and girlfriend Joanna Parker.

The pair live together in Rotherham and train at the British squad’s base at the English Institute of Sport.

The majority of able-bodied and disabled table tennis players who have London on their minds train up to six hours a day at the Sheffield venue.

Drinkhall is usually the first in, last out, when his Italian league commitments do not have him based just outside Verona.

He will not be able to play alongside Parker at London, with only singles and the team game disciplines scheduled for the Games. Singles comes first for a young man who started playing the sport at eight at the Ormesby table tennis centre in Middlesbrough. But it is with the team where he has the best chance of upsetting the Chinese and winning an Olympic medal.