Ni Xialian plays strangely, non-mainstream and not very beneficial to the development of table tennis
Ni Xialian is a former Chinese national table tennis player who now represents Luxembourg in the competition. At the age of 59, she galloped on the international stage, and even won the third place in the women's doubles of the World Table Tennis Championships in 2021. In the competition, she often defeated young and strong top players, Wang Yidi, Du Kaixian and so on.
While people admire Ni Xialian for her old age, they are also very curious about why a super-old player can beat a young, agile player.
In addition to table tennis can avoid some running and use less moving standing pile play, Ni Xialian's use of skin and the strange way of playing are another important reason:
See the following two sentences from the Internet:
Ni Xialian has a CURL P1V long glue on her forehand and VICTAS102 positive glue on her backhand.
She shoots straight with her left hand, using an offensive style of positive glue on one side and long glue on the other side. The ball path is unpredictable and the style of play is strange and changeable.
Usually table tennis players forehand and backhand rubber are two fixed rubber, will not be used interchangeably.
In the young era of Cai Zhenhua and Ni Xialian , due to the imperfection of table tennis rules: Cai Zhenhua and a group of other players used two different types of rubber skin, and kept pouring the board in the game, that is, constantly switching the rubber used for the forehand and backhand, including the possible reversing after each shot in a round.
Since different rubber skins produce different rotations under similar movements. In the game, the opponent could not tell which rubber Cai Zhenhua was hitting the ball with, which caused a misjudgment of the spin, resulting in a mismatch in the catch, or even a mistake in just receiving the serve. Matches are often played in one or two rounds, and this kind of game, which is mostly cycled in picking up and serving, is almost unspectacle and cannot attract large spectators.
The ITTF realized the problem and carried out reforms, stipulating that the two sides of the rubber must be red and black respectively to distinguish to help the opponent identify which side of the rubber is being used, effectively increasing the number of shots in a round, increasing the continuity and viewing of the game.
But at that time, the ITTF left a small tail and did not completely ban the pouring board.
That's why, for Ni Xialian she doesn't distinguish between forehand and backhand rubber. Her two-sided rubber skin is used interchangeably in the forehand and backhand, in other words, the inverted board is still the core of Ni Xialian play.
Since the current mainstream playing style is anti-glue rubber, long glue and positive glue are relatively few, and the inverted board play is even more scarce, so young players are very unfamiliar with it, and it is difficult to keep up with Ni Xialian at once, especially in the moment to make the correct recognition and use of suitable response actions.
In a way, the inverted board is a trick similar to magic, which deviates from the essence of table tennis and focuses on improving the development of technology.
The inverted board technique is just a product of an era, and as Ni Xialian ages, it will eventually disappear on the international stage.
At present, mainstream players rarely spend energy to train the reverse technique, which shows that there is a conclusion on its judgment.
