At the Erke German Open staged in Berlin from Wednesday 19th to Sunday 23rd November 2008, Romania’s Adrian Crisan was disqualified owing a racket irregularity following his third round Men’s Singles match.

Frank Shreiner of the Donic Company was present in Berlin and has been in contact with the German Table Tennis Association; the concern being that the incident reflects badly on Adrian Crisan.

Below is the unedited translation of the article.

Therefore, the German Table Tennis Association published an article on the website www.tischtennis.de in order to clarify the matter and explain that were no ill intentions on the part of Adrian Crisan.

Misunderstanding apparently led to change Adrian Crisan Racket That the Romanian top player in the eighth-finals against Timo Boll on Saturday was despatched with a non-compliant racket, and then - according to the ITTF regulations - after the game was disqualified, is incontrovertible.

However, there are now new facts about how it happened that Adrian Crisan played with this racket.

“To me the racket was put in the box and they said I could play with it. That’s what I then did,” said Crisan.

How it exactly ended will probably never be entirely clarified. After talks with players, officials and referees on the spot, the situation is as follows: a half hour before the match Adrian Crisan and Timo Boll appeared for testing of their rackets by ITTF-Controller, Nobuyuki Shirakawa.

Crisan's racket underwent numerous tests, including for the banned volatile solvents, the flatness, color and thickness of the sponge/rubber. The latter was a problem for Crisan. The experts found both sides to be too thick, the limit of four millimetres was slightly exceeded.

The Ochsenhausen DTTL athlete brought another racket into the game. As he lacked the replacement rubber he borrowed a conformant racket from a teammate. This he must play with.

Two Crisan rackets in use At that time there were now two Crisan rackets in circulation - his standard equipment and the teammate’s replacement racket. The replacement racket was a different material than Crisan’s normal blade and with other coverings, reducing his chances of victory to a minimum against Timo Boll, who is currently in good form.

Due to a misunderstanding with the handover of the bat to Adrian Crisan, the Romanian used his original racket, assuming that the measurement was in order. This measurement was actually the teammate’s racket. Before the start of the game, he was also reminded that after the game a further test will be given.

Adrian Crisan then went with his original racket with the two thick coverings. The conformant replacement bat was returned by the referee - and remained unused. Crisan won the match 4:3 against Boll. During testing after the game the covering was again found non-conformant. So the umpire team had only one decision: disqualification.