Many people think table tennis a simple game where you hit a little ball over a net which can be fun in the living room or on the beach.

But in reality it has thrown up the most puzzling and intricate dilemmas which a former world champion believes is taking the sport in the wrong direction, making it less attractive and interesting to the average sports fan.

Earlier this month, England's Johnny Leach, now 76 and world singles champion 50 years ago, blasted the state of the modern game, saying technology had effectively become more important than skill.Leach, now president of the English Table Tennis Association, condemned modern-day tactics.

``The sport should abandon the use of speed glue and long pimples,'' Leach said. ``A standardisation of theracquet is needed to eliminate untouchable spin and short rallies.

``Now, many winners rely on the materials on their bats to win points this is wrong. We should follow the lead of lawn tennis by making sure that players are winning by their own skill and tactics, not glue and pimples.''Leach has had his way as long pimples were banned earlier this month.More money as the third millennium approaches has, unlike other sports, led to players gaining an edge through technology rather than banned drugs.Earlier this year, table tennis technology experts Rufford Harrison of the USA and Norway's Odd Gustavsen, with International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) approval, gave some ideas which would make the sport more attractive.They offered the advice of having a 40mm ball, that has a diameter two millimetres longer than the current ball, which they believe might slow down and therefore lengthen rallies, making it more interesting for the spectator.Another idea is to somehow slow down the incredible pace and spinfrom fast racquet coverings.

However, with the variety of coverings on the market, limiting them to a few slower types could throw up problems from traditional makers of table tennis equipment.

The choice of which coverings were chosen could severely help some players and hinder others, such is the high dependence there is on equipment in top level table tennis.

One of the major stumbling blocks is the use of table-tennis-speak which has a bewildering vocabulary all of its own. The ITTF has just banned the use of long pimples which sounds more like a skin problem than a bat covering.Table tennis is one of the biggest sports in the world. It is unquestionably the biggest sport in Asia, mainly because it is the Chinese national sport.As China has a quarter of the world's population, it is something like the third biggest participation sport in the world behind football and basketball.

Table tennis, when it comes to the technical side, still leaves the average man in the street nonplussed.