Miscellaneous

In a social media poll, fans of the Table Tennis Bundesliga were able to vote for their ‘TTBL Player of the Month for January’ after the Liebherr Cup Final Four and the first three match days of the second half of the season. There were five candidates to choose from (in alphabetical order): Benedikt Duda (TTC Schwalbe Bergneustadt), Ruwen Filus (TTC RhönSprudel Fulda-Maberzell), Steffen Mengel (Post SV Mühlhausen), Bastian Steger (TSV Bad Königshofen) and Adam Szudi (Borussia Dortmund). Steger received the most votes.

Age is no barrier to victory: with five consecutive wins, perennial favourite Bastian Steger dominated the early stages of the TTBL second half of the season. The 44-year-old almost single-handedly kept his TSV Bad Königshofen in the race to avoid relegation.

But the TTBL community had even more in store for Steger. For seamlessly continuing his winning streak, which had been ongoing since mid-November, after the turn of the year with points against Werder Bremen's duo Marcelo Aguirre and Mattias Falck, Grenzau's Maciej Kubik and Feng Yi-Hsin, and finally Wang Lichen (1. FC Saarbrücken), the fans voted the most experienced player in the German top flight, with almost 26 years of service, ‘Player of the Month’ for the first time since the introduction of the vote. Almost two-thirds of all participating fans voted for Steger – a clear result.

‘I am delighted with this result,’ commented “Basti” when asked by TTBL about the outcome of the vote, ‘it's a wonderful recognition.’ It is also recognition for a success rate of over 70 percent after 15 match days and a place among the ten best players in the German elite class.

His fabulous run came as much of a surprise to Steger as it did to his astonished fans. ‘Things have been going really, really well lately. I'm a little surprised myself that it's gone so well. But I have to say that it's just still fun to play – and when the results are as good as they have been lately, even more so,’ said the two-time European Championship bronze medallist.

But enjoyment is not Steger's only motivation. The right-hander has recently been able to successfully channel his team's threat of relegation into positive energy, as the native of Upper Palatinate himself speculates: "The situation is not so easy for our club. There is really a lot at stake down there, so of course you want to give everything to stay in the league. Perhaps pressure situations are even more challenging and drive you to perform at your best again and again, because it is very important to me that the club and everyone associated with it continues to play in the first division. That would be a great thing for everyone."

Interview: Florian Manzke
Featured image above: Patrick Wichmann