Fan at forefront of youth brigade

As a tune-up for the April 21-28 world championships in Budapest, The Marvellous 12 tournament in Shenzhen afforded Chinese paddlers a great opportunity to hone their skills.

The experience was especially precious for China's rising crop of young players.

On the men's side, the brightest star is 22-year-old world No 1 Fan Zhendong, who reeled off 11 straight wins en route to becoming the Marvellous 12 champion.

On the women's side, 25-year-old Chen Meng defeated Olympic champion and world No 1 Ding Ning to be crowned.

"The Marvellous 12 helped me to properly prepare for the world championships by showing me what aspects of my game I need to improve," said Fan, who was last year's ITTF Male Table Tennis Star award winner.

"I believe I still have more potential to grow and I feel I have more responsibility on my shoulders. I must focus more on the details. My expectation of the world championships is to keep winning."

Before the Shenzhen event started, Qin Zhijian, head coach of Team China's men's squad, specifically singled out Fan to fight for the sweep.

"Through the Marvellous 12, we are trying to find any weakness in the team and then adjust the training to present a strong Team China in Tokyo," said Qin.

"This time the mission for Fan was to win all his games. We did the math－at the world championships he will need to win at least seven games to take the gold medal, so this time we wanted him to try to win all of the games."

Another of China's hopefuls is world No 3 Lin Gaoyuan.

"Team Japan has always been our strongest rival, so their rapid growth has put huge pressure on us," said the 23-year-old Lin.

"It's undeniable that they are stronger than before, which provides both pressure and motivation for us. It will only push us to find a better way to defeat them."

Team China has endured unexpected losses to Japan several times, prompting Chinese Table Tennis Association boss Liu Guoliang to reform the national team's coaching and introduce a tough results-based evaluation system.

Team China coaches can only score points in the system by winning gold medals at international tournaments. Failing the evaluation will result in a coach's demotion and his or her salary being halved.

Last December, Liu also established an athletes' committee and a two-way selection process for coaches and players in a bid to produce more suitable partnerships.

"Given the age of our top foreign rivals, we might face greater challenges at the Olympics," said Liu.

"The Japanese team has been making efforts for decades and they dream of winning gold in Tokyo."

The coaching reform should also benefit the players, as Lin said it will allow coaches to spend more time focusing on individual player development.

On the other hand, China's traditional competitiveness will continue to be a factor.

Sun Minyang, a 20-year-old who took part in the Shenzhen tournament, pointed out that one of Team Japan's advantages in recent years has been its willingness to make changes.

"Japan is more flexible than Team China to some degree," said Sun.

"Team China has been winning gold medals over and over again, so we haven't made enough changes. For example, Ito Mima is one of Japan's stars who is always trying new tactics. As long as she has an idea, she can make it happen.

"The improvement of Japanese players is actually a good thing. Otherwise, Chinese players who have no outside pressure could not grow. Japan's improvement can make us even stronger."