46^th World Table Tennis Championships

Osaka, Japan · April 23 - May 6, 2001

Interview with Sadyar Aliyev

By Tim Boggan, ITTF Media

Tim: Sadyar, I was impressed by your closing comments at the Apr. 26^th ITTF Annual General Meeting that Officials ought to get up out of their Committee Chairs, take up their rackets, and go out to the playing courts. But let me delay pursuing why you said that in order to first tell our readers something about you. To begin with, how is it that you attended the AGM Meeting?

Sadyar: As the President of the Azerbaijan Table Tennis Federation.

Tim: Since that’s of course somewhere in what was once the Soviet Union, how is it that you speak such excellent English?

Sadyar: My mother was Deputy Minister of Culture, so from a very early age—with the KGB supervising of course—I was in the company of artists, musicians, politicians, many educated and enlightened people from around the world. At these friendly family gatherings I soon started to learn conversational English.

Tim: And your Tim:est in table tennis—when did that start?

Sadyar: I began playing at school in Baku when I was 14. Afterwards, I went to a university--what was then called the Institute of Oil, for Baku is the oil capital of the world—and by then I’d reached a high amateur level. Later, I played for a county Championship team.

Tim: So how did you move from being a player into becoming an official?

Sadyar: With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and Armenia’s occupation of 20% of Azerbaijan territory there were considerable problems, not the least of which were economic ones. The best table tennis players and coaches began leaving Azerbaijan, and soon there was almost no place for the Sport. Wrestling, boxing, and the martial arts had taken over the playing halls.

Tim: You felt then you had to take some initiative?

Sadyar: Exactly. Here I was in a city of two and a half million people, and there was only one place to play table tennis. The Sport I loved was in danger of being totally eliminated.

Tim: So what did you do?

Sadyar: From 1994 to 1997, as Vice President of the Azerbaijan Federation, I went to Bratislava for the European Championships and then in ’97 to the Manchester World’s.

Tim: Naturally this experience helped you?

Sadyar: I watched how the play was organized and talked with players and officials. In 1997 I was elected President of the Federation for four years, and now just recently I was elected again for four years.

Tim: So dare I ask if there’s been any improvement in the state of table tennis in Azerbaijan?

Sadyar: Definitely. When Stefano Bosi, President of the European Union, visited us, he wrote a very accurate Report. “Table tennis in Azerbaijan,” he said, “exists only on enthusiasm.” But now there are six clubs in Baku and clubs in the city’s outside regions. As perhaps you know, we’ve had famous players and coaches from Azarbaijan—Valentina Popova and Rita Pogosova quickly come to mind, and perhaps you know Nikolai Novikov, now a coach in Canada. Popova and another coach, Oparin, are presently helping us.

Tim: Then you’re optimistic about table tennis in Azerbaijan?

Sadyar: Well, of course we need money to improve and expand. But we’re trying hard to do that. We’ve three important sources of sponsorship help: our own Federation, State organizations, and the Minister of Sport who’s connected with Olympic funding.

Tim: So, given your intensive involvement, and your passionate desire to popularize the Sport, you obviously have strong thoughts to share with ITTF officials. Why did you want these officials to get down on the playing courts?

Sadyar: The officials are going in the right direction. They see the need for changes. They’re right to want longer rallies, to want to put added pressure on the players with 11-point games. But they still have to have a new perspective. I think they need to see, to feel, that the ball, the table, is really still very small in the view of the spectators watching from such a distance as we find in Osaka. And that it’ s this distance from the playing action that makes for a division between player and spectator..

Tim: I couldn’t agree with you more. And I know that others Tim:ested in the staging of play—England’s Alan Ransome, for example—have long urged that the spectators be brought into an up-close “boxing ring” or “theater-in-the-square” setting. I myself feel that in the Tim:ests of the “play,” the drama, we should allow the coaches to dramatically stride the sidelines and demonstrably coach their players.   

Sadyar: I strongly feel that the ITTF marketing people should do something about the boring presentation of the matches, but I don’t agree that coaches should be allowed to do what you suggest. Table tennis is a nervous, fast game, and coaches yelling at players would be very distracting, players would lose concentration, the quality of play would suffer.

Tim: But there needs to be more excitement, more fan identification with rank and file players from rank and file countries. If the Chinese and Korean flags aren’t furiously fluttering, the drums aren’ t beating, there’s often a terrible deadness  out there on the courts.

Sadyar: I agree. Often there’s very little reaction even from teammates. The whole atmosphere is too often static. The public needs “winding up.” We want our Sport to be a major one. But how can it be unless we stage it dramatically as other sports do. We should take a cue from U.S. basketball. Our climactic matches should start in absolute darkness. Then a searchlight should introduce the individual players, who then ought to come spontaneously out of the spectators.

Tim: So many spectators, so many players (and often the players are the spectators) have so little Tim:est in the matches. We need heroes and villains, as in wrestling. We need entertainers, especially as the gulf between the Asian stars and the world’s others widens.

Sadyar: You know, as a hobby, I collect pieces of what I call “table tennis art”—how the musical group Pearl Jam uses the sound of the bouncing ping-pong ball or how Snickers plays with ping-pong to advertise their candy bar. We should be so imaginative. Think of Tiger Woods on TV putting on his juggling act with racket, er club, and white ball. We should make it “cool” to be involved in table tennis.

Tim: Hmm, next thing, Sadyar, you’ll be wanting teams to have cheerleaders. THEY could periodically stride the courts.?

Sadyar: I’m always on the side of the spectators.

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