Table tennis stars bank on home support

British No 1 Paul Drinkhall is hoping “home support” in Glasgow will help English table tennis stars reach new heights at the Commonwealth Games.
Paul DrinkhallPaul Drinkhall
Paul Drinkhall

The Middlesbrough-born 24-year-old – a London Olympian two years ago – claimed silver in the men’s team event and bronze in the mixed doubles in Delhi four years ago despite a lack of vocal backing from the crowd, but has high expectations in front of a British audience when the action gets under way at the Scotstoun Sports Complex today.

“I’ve got my mum, dad, brother and sister and then a couple of the other team members have got family coming up,” he said.

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“Hopefully, we can turn some of the Scottish heads and get them on our side as well, but we’ll have to wait and see.

“In Delhi we didn’t have any home support apart from a couple of parents, but we managed to get silver and bronze there.

“With home support we can build on that and, hopefully, come away with a gold medal.”

Drinkhall, whose wife Jo is also part of England’s Games squad, added: “I think the table tennis team are in great shape.

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“We got promotion at the world championships just over a month ago.

“I won the Spanish Open in April and Liam (Pitchford) has climbed up the world rankings a lot in the last year.

“Everyone has been in great form – I think the women are looking quite good at the moment as well, so we’re all going to be pushing for medals and hopefully we’ll come out happy.”*

Drinkhall is joined by two more table tennis stars from North Yorkshire in the team event from today; Karina Le Fevre, 21, from Stockton-on-Tees and Daniel Reed, 24, from Northallerton.

The national table tennis squad is based at the 
English Institute of Sport in Sheffield.