Table tennis is net gain for BBC

The BBC may have lost Match of the Day, Six Nations rugby and Test cricket, but sports fans can relax; table tennis is bouncing back on Grandstand today.

The sport is returning two decades after Desmond Douglas was the pride of English ping-pong and the international game was dominated by the Chinese.

It has been revived in a competition created specially for the BBC with the aim of stimulating interest ahead of this year's Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

They might not be household names, but the PPP Healthcare Commonwealth Masters brought together six top players, including British number one Matthew Syed and his old adversary Chetan Baboor, for a knockout contest at the Wembley Conference Centre last night.

The highlights will be shown at lunchtime today along with explanations of players' tactics and technical aspects of the sport. The contest was arranged after Syed, the 2001 Commonwealth champion, approached the programme to suggest television coverage would provide the perfect curtain-raiser for the sport's appearance in the Games beginning on 25 July.

Michael Cole, Grandstand's deputy editor, said the contest was the "right event at the right time" and would provide fast, exciting action that would entrance a new generation of table tennis fans. The highlight was expected to be the confrontation between Syed and Baboor, whose previous meeting in India, when Syed kept his title in front of a hostile home crowd, was regarded as the most exciting Commonwealth table tennis final in history.

Mr Cole denied the return of table tennis was a sign of desperation by the BBC in the face of its shrinking portfolio of sports events.

"Table tennis is a sport on the rise," he said.