In 1917, Lenin’s Bolsheviks captured the Post Office, the railway station, the armaments depot, the Winter Palace and other strategic points. In no time at all St Petersburg was in the hands of the Reds with barely a drop of blood being spilt. Ninety-three years later, Ping London is using a similar strategy. Key London institutions are, for four weeks over this summer, falling to the power of ping and an impatient army of table tennis enthusiasts of all ages and abilities. St Pancras Station, the O2 arena, Tate Modern, Westfield’s, the British Library (once home to Karl Marx), Canary Wharf, Covent Garden and Heathrow Airport have all succumbed to the ping army.

In fact 100 table tennis tables are being strategically placed across the capital for a whole month of people’s ping and I am reliably informed that other British cities are soon to follow. No cost, no booking, no equipment needed. Just turn up to any of the one hundred locations for the sheer hell of it. Information will also be available at each site as to where the nearest table tennis club is located ‘ so there is no excuse for not taking things further. It’s all part of a three way partnership between Sing London, Sport England and the English Table Tennis Association. Sport England want a million more people involved in sporting activity before the 2012 Olympics. The ETTA want to recruit more players to their network of table tennis clubs. Sing London want to replicate the success of last year’s Street Piano Project where pianos were popping up all over London.

This initiative is part of the new face of sport; free, casual and open to mass participation. If you want to take things further then well and good. If not, just enjoy it for its own sake like the fun runs and cycle days that are spring up all over the country. No doubt the corporate beast will be hovering, but for now these type of activities are creating a space where participation is far more important than winning. It’s partly about reclaiming our towns and cities from the dour banality of mindless consumerism.

For too long the staid governing bodies of English sport have resolutely ignored the potential of mass participation relying instead for their survival on the tiny, closed world of word-of-mouth recruitment via the prosperous middle-classes. They most definitely didn’t want the working class gate-crashing their pleasant Sunday afternoons at the tennis club/golf club etc. With such a soft, pampered base it is little wonder that English sport is so uncompetitive on the world stage. By daring to open the doors, English table tennis will be in an enviable position to pick up their own equivalent to the Williams sisters. The bigger the base, the greater the incoming revenues, and the higher the pyramid of success. It ain’t rocket science it’s just ping pong.