An analysis of inter-stroke interval in elite table tennis matches

Table tennis is a sport played under temporal constraints due to its small court size. During a short period of time, the table tennis player needs to respond to the placement, speed, and spin of the ball. Although prior research has examined rally duration in elite-level table tennis, the number of matches covered in those studies was very small, and the data were outdated, as it had been more than 30 years since the previous studies were conducted. This study aims to clarify the temporal constraints in table tennis by analysing inter-stroke interval. Data were collected from 30 professional T-League singles matches (13 men’s matches and 17 women’s matches) played between 2020 and 2022. Ball trajectories were measured using a multi-camera system. To estimate the interval between shots where the racket and ball did not collide, a Multi-Layer Perceptron model was employed with ball speed and hit position as input features. Results show that median inter-stroke interval is 0.56 ± 0.25 s for men’s matches, and 0.52 ± 0.26 s for women’s matches. Additionally, significant variations were found across different shot numbers: 0.66 ± 0.11 s for the second shots, 0.54 ± 0.21 for the third shots, 0.42 ± 0.20 for the fourth shots, 0.44 ± 0.19 for the fifth or later shots in men’s matches, 0.65 ± 0.11 for the second shots, 0.55 ± 0.26 for the third shots, 0.42 ± 0.20 for the fourth shots, and 0.42 ± 0.13 for the fifth or later shots in women’s matches.