In celebration of World Table Tennis Day, Tracey Hebron (Collections Clerk) celebrates a Barnsley born, four times Commonwealth & English table tennis player Alan Hydes

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Here at Barnsley Museums we are always uncovering new stories about remarkable local people. One of them, Alan Hydes, was born in 1949 in a working-class household in New Lodge, Barnsley, the son of Lilly and Fred Hydes and brother to twins John and Glyn.

The boys are said to have spent hours throwing a ball against the coal shed at the back of their house and Alan soon developed a great hand eye and spatial co-ordination.

He first played table tennis at Barnsley Boys Club (now the Lamproom Theatre) paying 4 pence a week subs. But with support from his family he soon began to scrape together money for tournaments playing at places locally like the Ring O’ Bells pub, Royston, The Corner Pin in Barnsley Town centre and the Lundwood Hotel. He quickly became so dedicated that he was playing table tennis seven days a week.

In 1961 his mother had bought him a racket covered with rubber from the local Co-op for 50 shillings and by February 1963, when he was just 13 years old, his grandad gave him the money to compete in the South Yorkshire Open in Sheffield. In 1963 he received the “Most promising junior in England” award after making his debut against West Germany as youngest player to represent England junior team aged just 14 .

In all he won five English National Table Tennis Championships titles and in 1968 was selected to play at the European Championships in Lyon. In 1969 he beat the Russian number one ranked player in Munich, before beating the world champion in Hungary soon becoming the ranked 6th player in the world.

Alan saw the world playing table tennis, competing in Moscow 1970, Nygoya 1971, Rotterdam 1972, Novi Sad 1973 to name just a few. One particular highlight of his career was his role in ‘Ping Pong Diplomacy’ between East and West at the height of the Vietnam War.

He was competing in Japan when the Chinese government invited the UK and USA teams to China to play table tennis. China was very much closed to the West at this time and Alan can remember being escorted by UK soldiers across the ‘no man’s land’ bridge that linked Hong Kong to China.

The taxi driver who picked Alan up from Doncaster Train Station on his return asked: “Where’s tha’ bin lad?” and Alan replied “China”. The taxi driver replied “Has tha’ been drinking?” and Alan said “no” and that he was also on Panorama on TV that evening. The taxi driver remarked “now I know tha’s been drinking.”

Alan went on the coach the New Zealand table tennis team and became vice president of the Table Tennis Federation chosen by the then President Roy Evans OBE. He also saw commercial success with Dunlop as he designed lighter bats and modernised the equipment of the game drawing on his own experience.

In January 1976 the company produced its first range of bats with reversed sponge rubber called the Alan Hydes range before Alan set up his own company Lion Sport in 1988.

Alan’s Achievements Are Celebrated

As part of the Eldon Street High Street Heritage Action Zone, Alan was given his own temporary blue plaque in 2022 on the former Y.M.C.A building on Eldon Street where he once played. The series of temporary plaques were created with Year 8 students from Horizon Community College.

Alan was invited to the Chinese Embassy to celebrate the 50th anniversary ping pong diplomacy to celebrate the the 74th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. For his Fellowship Alan travelled to Japan and China to explore the playing of table tennis and improve his personal performance. Alan also speaks about his memories of ‘ping pong diplomacy’ in this video

While we were on YouTube we also found this short British Pathe clip from 1969.

As you can see in the image below, Alan’s blue England top is now in the sporting section at Experience Barnsley Museum alongside lots of other memorabilia including Frieda Stoner’s football shirt which you can read about in this blog

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