Briefly / Table tennis: Glue ban comes unstuck

The threat to the leading table tennis event in Britain, the English Open, was averted yesterday when the English Table Tennis Association agreed at a national council meeting to make an exception to its total ban on glues used to stick rubbers to bats, writes James Leigh. Had England decided to adhere to the rule, unique to Britain, the likelihood was that most of the world's leading players would not have come to the event in January, and it would have been cancelled.