A slightly surreal interview with Barry Hearn appeared in The Guardian recently (5/01/10 Anna Kessel) which caught my imagination not just for what he had to say about sports promotion but also for the sheer energy and enthusiasm of the man. Hearn started out an East London chancer, the son of a bus driver and a born optimist. He made his mark in the 1980’s promoting snooker players before moving on to boxing where he represented such notables as Chris Eubank and Naseem Hamad. His portfolio then expanded to include darts which, as chairman of the Professional Darts Corporation, he oversaw a remarkable renaissance in the fortunes of that sport.

He has now returned to his original passion of snooker where he has been appointed the new chairman of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association where he plans to turn another flagging sport into a multi-million pound winner. The philosophy behind Hearn’s sports promotion can be summed up by his following words:

There’s a new generation of sports fans, they want fast, speedy action, they want Twenty 20 cricket, they want Prize Fighter boxing. I can see the purist’s argument but it’s as dated as the dinosaur, we’re in a money world and we’ve got to do what brings the cash in.

One side of me is appalled at this philosophy which entails the further commercialisation of sport, but another side welcomes the prospect of a daring entrepreneur sweeping aside the old blazer brigades and dragging some of the minority sports into the 21st century. I suppose it’s about getting the balance right. Twenty 20 cricket has been an outstanding success sitting comfortably alongside limited over one day matches and the more traditional five day test cricket. What cricket did not need was the over the top million pound extravaganza brought in by now disgraced Alan Stanford.

Towards the end of the interview Hearn touched on a topic rather closer to my heart than boxing, snooker or darts: table tennis. I’ve long held the suspicion that table tennis was going to be the next big thing, particularly considering that the likely superpower of the 21st century has table tennis as their national sport. Three things were holding back the worldwide explosion of this magical sport: unimaginative administrators; the absence of a filthy rich sponsor; and the proliferation of highly specialised bats that render the modern game a complete mystery to the lay enthusiast.Hearn intuitively senses the potential but it has to be in its original hard bat format. Here’s what Hearn has to say about the greatest game on Earth.

They ruined table tennis when they brought in those foam bats. They lost the noise that was synonymous with the game. I watched table tennis in the 1960’s with 15,000 at Madison Square Garden. I want to bring that back using the old bats, launch it in Vegas, the world’s top 16 players, pay them huge amounts of money. A group of investors have asked me to look into it for May/June next year.I can hear the table tennis establishment squealing at the mere thought of it, but it could conceivably work, sitting alongside the existing structures with each complementing the other. Ive recently joined a group of hard bat enthusiasts who have started to organise regular tournaments and although it’s a humble beginning, one can almost touch the future potential. Mr Barry Hearn may just be the man to turn potential into a 21st century reality. Just hold your nose when those dirty mega bucks come flowing in!