My Experiments with TT balls

1. Foxing the Foxes: Given their legendary cunning I thought foxes would be able to differentiate between real and fake eggs. Turns out they can’t. 

I left a few TT balls out in the garden overnight. My plan was not to feed anyone a plastic meal, I had only postponed picking up the balls until after dinner (invariably the next day). To my surprise, the next morning I found the balls punctured with bite marks.

 

My first obvious suspect was my surly neighbour. But given the height of our fence and his beer belly, I had to give him the benefit of doubt. Which left the only other possible culprit, the nightcrawlers of London - foxes. Poor things, not only were they cheated off a good meal, they also lost some of my reverence, cultivated through years of reading fairy tales.

 2. If you have a flat roof, especially wooden beams, then here’s a fun experiment. Leave a ball or two on the roof and try to forget about it. You will soon notice that this will make you believe in biblical storms. This is how it works – Every time there’s a slight wind, the ball will roll (sometimes bounce) from one end to another on the roof. This rolling action creates a sound which reverberates throughout the whole house, enough to awaken you from your Zoom meetings and make you fear for your life thinking a biblical storm is raging outside. The illusion however only lasts until you open your window and see girls in miniskirts taking their dog out on a walk. In any case, I think this is still a cheap and effective method to make the rest of your household want to stay indoors during the lockdown. Remember, staying home saves lives.

 3.      When you have a disobedient child who doesn’t pick up TT balls after a game, you will eventually end up stepping on a few accidentally. This has always made me sad in the past, and each time I had to weigh my options between throwing away the damaged ball or the child. But not anymore, I have discovered a technique to repair such damaged balls – leave them in hot boiling water with the crumpled side facing down. In just a few minutes you’ll see the balls gaining back their original shape (well, almost). See pictures below.

Before

During

After

 4. In my new part-time job as a Balls Fixer (strictly Table Tennis only) I made two curious observations.

a.      When placed in boiling water the older balls emanate a very familiar odour. I could not place the smell the first few times, it evoked a sense of nostalgia, a smell from a distant past. Much later it struck me that the smell was the same as that of burning camphor (karpooram) which is often used in Indian temple rituals (and hence the trip back to my childhood). The boiling water technique works only on the old TT balls.

b.      The new balls do not give off any odour in boiling water, nor do they repair themselves. In the pictures above you can spot one such rebellious ball, a millennial.

 5.  I tried to understand the reason behind this difference. Apparently until a few years ago TT balls were made of celluloid, which is a mixture of nitrocellulose and camphor. For the nerdy amongst you, this is what you are after.

Due to the combustible nature of camphor, there are strict regulations in its production. Also, transporting them has become tricky ever since the airline industry stopped dating anyone hot (a.k.a inflammable).

6.    I’m sure there are other reasons as well, all of which together have contributed to a big shift in the last 4-5 years towards using plastic TT balls. Soon celluloid balls will become a thing of the past, stuff you buy with bitcoins on the dark-web or inherit as family heirloom. If you ever get lucky and lay your hands on one, this small video shows how to treat them with proper care and respect.

 Disclaimer – Some animals may have been injured in the making of this article.

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