The names of the Nobel Prize nominees are not revealed until 50 years after the event. This adds a certain fascination to the awards given out. Who did the eventual winner beat? Was he or she up against the cream?

Away from the bookies’ chalk and inside the Swedish Academy papers are passed around and eyebrows arched enquiringly. The initial list is cumbersome – it includes around 200 potential laureates selected by professors, society presidents, previous winners and academy members. This is whittled down to a ‘long list’ of 15-20 preliminary candidates in April and then a ‘short list’ of 5 final candidates in May.

Much rigour and due process takes place and that is before the three months of reading and assessment which occurs in order to prepare reports and discuss the merits of each candidate.

It would be nice to think that similar levels of deliberation and brooding happened prior to and on Friday, 27^th March at the pre-Finals committee meeting. Present were officers Alan Bradshaw, John and Margaret Scowcroft, George Berry, Jean Smart and head honchos Roy Caswell and Brett Haslam.

On these shoulders rested the fates of the season’s big-name players – most challengingly who was to be engraved on The Albert Howcroft Trophy for Most Improved Player. Not an easy thing to decide. An algorithm can only churn out an unloved number. It does not factor in personal circumstances, the general feeling amongst your peers and the inevitable politics that prevail.

‘It’s a bit like politics and statistics. Which way do you jump?’ General Secretary Caswell admitted with redoubtable insight into the workings of the loyal few that give up their Fridays. Which way indeed when the list is so strong, so full of games revamped?

Six candidates shone across the five Bolton divisions: Robert Shaw (Div4, from 8 to 42%); Keane Mills (74 to 100%); Nathan Rhodes (29 to 70%); Christopher Boys (Div4, 80% to Div3, 51%); Faizan Bhura (Div4, 72% to Div3, 58%); Ray Isherwood (Div2, 27 to 68%). It was Bhura, however, who impressed the old guard. ‘In the end we all just looked at each other and went for Faizan.’

Science perhaps left at the door, but then in the 4’ 11” Bhura they have made a genuine discovery. ‘I always do rubbish in the [pre-match warm-ups]. I make them think my technique is not good at all and then when the match is ready I pull my socks up and turn my brain into gear. That’s what I do.’

‘A proper kidder,’ to quote Scott Brown. Too dry to read at times, but there with his secret weapon – his consistent forehand.

You can get a thousand sentences from Bhura on the game and how he has tracked its idiosyncrasies from the age of 12 – charming, colloquial passages that reach out and shatter any sense of smoothness. All that matters though is his devotion to table tennis, his 1994 Bolton-born (Indian mother/Zambian father) bones that have lifted this trophy once held by Andrea Holt.

Max Brooks knows very little about Rocky Balboa yet skips five times a week – outside, near the back gate. Such rhythmic poise augments his low centre of gravity and remarkable balance. He claims to stand 5’ 6” tall although one suspects that underneath the slicked-back, mountainous hair he is actually 5’ 5.

The grandson of treasured Lancashire cricketer Harry Pilling (himself a dynamic 5’ 3” [pictured]) and professional ice skater Yvonne Rayner, Max has a blood line that almost forcibly places a sporting implement in his hand. After first picking up a table tennis bat at the age of ten, however, he soon lost interest.

Smooth trajectories rarely chart a player’s career. Most of the time it is a rugged path forward – a Snakes and Ladders board – full of pitfalls, hard dice and the odd bit of luck. Max’s serendipity came in the form of Sport England visiting his Tottington school two years later, informing him that he “had some talent for the game”. This neutral observation acted as a stimulus, a catalyst to where he is now.

Awarded the Ralph Palmer Memorial Trophy in early April as Bolton’s ‘Most Promising Junior of the Season’, Master Brooks – still just 15-years-old – took 44 scalps out of 45 in Division Three; his one blemish losing to the Austrian, Bernd Dumpelnik two weeks before Christmas when gifts are traditionally wrapped up in readiness for handing out.

Such an ascent into the annals of Bolton’s history (and indeed Bury’s if you consider his 49/57 win record with Seedfield in its equivalent division) has largely come about not as a result of any fortunate DNA, but rather through the guidance of surviving paternal grandfather, Mel Brooks (now 73). ‘Grampa Mel started me off at Heaton CC. Both grampas have been role models in helping me achieve my goals.’

Max’s approach to the game is surprisingly serene. There is none of the ‘mad’ or mercurial synonymous with such a christening. ‘Mental toughness and never, never give up – play for every point,’ he casually elucidates. Intensity doesn’t ride with the words but instead an internal grit and indomitable belief. It is the same when discussing education (refusing to fuss and be drawn on his favourite maths discipline): ‘All maths I enjoy. It will be what I need when I start work.’

The pragmatic side of him is startling in part – perhaps too clean or manufactured. But then, as Grampa Mel – chief mentor and disciple of Cliff Booth – tells me, returning to the main subject: ‘We spend time discussing strategy and the mental side of the game. He is like a sponge for taking in information, though being his own man he sometimes tries other things.’

Holding the Ralph Palmer trophy is like a ten-year pass to beautiful things – a soft guarantee of climbing the divisions. Big names have gone before Max including England’s Andrew Rushton (1996/97) – had their names inscribed on the silver plate.

A ‘B-game’ is what is required now. ‘He needs to dig short and develop an aggressive backhand block and kill,’ coach Brooks asserts. As for the skipping (3×40) – that will continue.

He has the hard jaw of youth – an almost inert face that gives very little away. After speaking to him, you do not get the sense that he has won anything, but rather lost. There is a bit of the dour Scot in him – a solemn, behind-the-eyes weighing up of events. And yet he is a Boltonian, a successful English lad who has walked through his home town’s 4^th division untrammeled and unbeaten.

Keane Mills, 15-years-old and 5’9” tall – a product of the Harper Brass stable (along with team mates Ellis Longworth and Nathan Rhodes) – has done something only two other people have done in recent years: he has gone through a full season without losing. Two extremes of the table tennis circuit seem to cosset such triumph – the Premier Division and Division Four; Michael Moir and John Nuttall earlier beneficiaries of the grandeur.

Mills is a special case though. The title was confirmed on April Fools’ Day when he was still 14 – eight years ahead of 22-year-old Nuttall’s startling achievement in 2012/13. ‘No matter what age you are, you can still match the best,’ he believes and asserts in equal measure – the candour not exactly pouring from him, but offering a rare glimpse of his conviction. ‘I show everyone respect and expect it back and I don’t show my anger as I believe it is a weakness. If you lose your head, you lose the game.’

It is this maturity and precocious flowering which has seemingly led him to where he is now: the recipient of a ‘Double’ in only his second league season (Harper Brass ‘D’ securing the Ron Hindle Trophy days after their title win). Indeed, he claims to have picked up a bat for the first time a mere “two and a half years ago while on holiday” – his exceptional hand/eye coordination obvious to all.

Fellow players around the clubs beat the Mills’ drum. In describing ‘the 100% kid’ a consistent array of words passes their lips: steady; good temperament; right attitude; attacking; patient; level-headed; lots of potential; great serves; focused. These qualities alone cannot have built such a force, an emerging warlord when at the table. They perhaps complement the evident desire and ministrations that exude from him however.

Necessary, critical voices that stray from the consensus point to the young man’s middle game, his unforced errors and also the fact that his mobility seems to be, at times, like a granny reaching for the sweet tray. “He only moves a bit,” one source commented. But what if he only needs to move a bit thus regularly returns to his upright stance whilst flogging the opposition.

Keane is uncompromising: ‘I’m guessing I didn’t move much against this one person.’ The stats bear this out – just two of his 66 conquests have gone to five sets and they were in September. More impressively, he cares. When the title was briefly in the hands of rivals Polonia at 9.30pm on 31^st March, he could not bear it: ‘My heart was in my mouth. I thought we had lost it and I was very frustrated.’

The stand out, plum fixture of the table tennis calendar’s opening week is Hilton ‘E’ versus Hilton ‘D’. The latter, captained by Andrew Morey, cleaned up Division Two last season yet worries now permeate the camp that ex-player Craig Duncan’s new team will make a mockery of the Hilton ranking system.

Win percentages mostly do not lie. Minh Le (73%), Stephen Hunt (48%) and Morey (81%) can expect the usual dilution of their stats now they are a division higher, however more worrisome is the imminent match on September 3^rd versus Division One foes Wilson Parker (93%), Duncan (87%) and Josh Sandford (50%).

If Sandford raises his game and shouts a little less (or more), then this first fixture could be discomfiting for Hilton ‘D’ – a psychological hammerblow just days into the 2014/15 winter season.

Hilton ‘E’ is a team whose combined personalities have not tread the circuit for some time. Rich in horseplay, humour, intensity and steel, its three amigos ask you to indulge them, stand back while the fireworks go off – respect not their antics but the grounded sorcery which they bring to the table.

Duncan, a southpaw, schooled in the French sassiness of Lads’ Club import and coach, Roger Bertrand believes the time is right for an assault. His fleeting appearances in the league – a mere 9 in 2011/12, zero in 2012/13 and 15 in 2013/14 – conceal a wider truth. Although not ‘match fit’, he is hungry, slavering in anticipation of a full season.

The record book shows that his pithy efforts for the soon-to-be enemy were timely and repartee-like. Dispatching Division Two’s finest, Alan Lansdale, Krishna Chauhan and new compatriot, Wilson Parker, Duncan’s form was almost too impressive, ‘rigged’ and ridiculous (symptomatic of a secret training camp). The only black marks were against Ramsbottom ringer, Neil Booth and Meadow Ben’s hard-hitting bull, Philip Calvert.

Duncan last played Morey, Le and Hunt competitively on 10^th February 2012 – beating Hunt only. Two and a half years on, his awkward style is expected to pick off all three players – avenging two four-set defeats in the process.

Parker, the youngest member of Hilton ‘E’ at seventeen, yet probably their most serious player is a fine example of how to fast-track a rough diamond. With only two seasons under his belt, his stats are incomparable in the middle divisions: 96% (Div3:2012/13); 93% (Div2:2013/14). Ready now to climb even further, Parker is the face, the consequence of good coaching.

And then there is Sandford – the third wheel in the operation. He reminds you a little of Cassius Clay, the Louisville Lip pre-Sonny Liston half a century ago. He talks a big game, disses the opposition, yet the more you witness such behaviour, the more you realise it is an act of affection.

Sandford cannot for one second drop his guard, his facial gizmos, his play-acting. Even at work you get the feeling his horsing around keeps him sane. He is centre stage – Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth – yet a different clock ticks inside him when alone.

In his mind he is writing his next wacky script. Sure – most of his words are arbitrary, off the cuff, impromptu, but the core are constructed. He is constructed. Like a clown inside the big top; a painted sneer instead of a smile.

Will he guide Hilton ‘E’ to glory? If the bat is working – yes.

To look at him now is to miss the man he was. Perhaps in the small, wrinkled canyons which line his face, it is possible to see a sliver of the past, a glimpse of the famous de Havilland Aircraft Company – his former employer – but mainly he is as unrecognisable as the large field and forest that Horwich once was.

Barry Walsh, born in June 1942 – six months after Pearl Harbour – loves three things: history; football; and table tennis. His living room is lined with books about the Second World War – fights at sea, land battles and the prodigious personalities that dominated the era.

He reels off, in a slightly stuttered fashion, a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt following the destruction of USS Kearny by a German U-boat: “…history has recorded who fired the first shot. In the long run, however, all that will matter is who fired the last shot.”

Such feeling, such inspiration, matters to Walsh. Powerful radio broadcasts, before he even travelled the womb, somehow capture what he represents – what he stands for and looks to uphold.

A former committee member at the Hilton Table Tennis Centre and one of six official key holders, Walsh only recently stepped down. Seven years of ‘letting people in’ was enough. The man always seen on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays was reducing his outings to just one thus finally retiring in legitimate fashion.

Recent years on the table tennis circuit have led to this moment – his number of matches declining from 72 (2011/12), to 21 (2012/13) to a mere 6 (2013/14); his last victory a season-ending barnstormer against John Lawrence on 6^th April 2012 (11-8, 11-8, 11-6). Lawrence twice bowed to the might of Walsh that season, as did Eric Shaw and Bob Waller.

Those days cease to hold much significance for Walsh though. Despite being one half of the uproarious Summer League outfit, the Coffin Dodgers and noted for wearing a fine collection of bob hats and T-shirts at the club, it is the 1950s and 60s that still have him entranced.

Re-awakening memories of his first few years of employment in the engineering sector and his initial rejection by de Havilland, he recalls: “Listen to this. This is what people can do. My brother Clive knew an upstairs guy – one of the bosses. He got me in. Those eight or nine years made me. It was proper engineering. Horwich was a massive place.”

Given the nickname ‘Chert’ from his footballing days, Walsh understood the importance of working for a grand and reputable British aviation manufacturer – its premises built in Horwich in 1937; “part of a group of ‘shadow’ factories constructed in Lancashire, away from the main bombing zone in the south.”

The Mosquito (1940), the Vampire (1943) and the Comet (1949) still fly through the mind of Walsh. They provide succour and compound his great thoughts of Church Road “bomber command” teacher, Mr Worrell.

Aware of his pupil’s eyesight deficiency and the need to wear glasses, Worrell produced the classic words: “Walsh – you’ll have to play at left back.”

From left back to engineering to table tennis, Walsh’s size 7 ½ feet now stand at the crest of a small mountain having been made an Honorary Lifetime Member of the Hilton Centre. For the inverse buccaneer, it is another beginning.

Something in his game reminds you of the divorced man getting married again. There is a kind of amnesia, a joyful, bright-eyed expectation. It is loaded up, stricken with naivety, however.

Scott Brown, Harper Brass’s Division Four no-hoper has the soft, bristled face of a baby gorilla and quite a decamped expression if things aren’t going right. His hands appear to be made out of putty. They are squidgy, nail-bitten affairs – part sausage factory, part heavy duty maulers.

The shots – mostly high-crested loopers – sail in on the other side of the table too gracefully at times, unarmed and full of conciliation. He would rather rally than send someone packing – or so it looks. For a big man, he exudes an extraordinarily high level of politeness in his play.

There is a hint of Neville Chamberlain – a willingness almost to share the points. Whether this ‘Sudetenland’ strategy is tactical, beneath the radar of mortal men, is not clear. Tennis players have been known to adopt similar ‘easing off the gas’ pacing. They have bought themselves valuable time in which to re-energise and really breathe.

The trouble is Brown is a struggler. During his Lads’ Club days in 2011/12 it took four whole months to win just four matches – a miserly 8% win record (4 out of 48); those early conquests – Nikul Ajwani, Kishan Patel, Connor Sutcliffe and Waqas Ali – inscribed in his mind to this day.

Hope comes in many forms though. Strugglers FC Moda, an Ottoman Empire football team founded in 1908 by Istanbul Greeks, finished runners-up in the 1909-1910 season. They were second only to Galatasaray. Sporting blood is in the Brown family – his granddad playing in goal for Lancashire Rebels FC in the 1980s.

Brown too has donned the green goalkeeping jersey whilst at secondary school. Was he good? “I was OK,” comes the unboastful mantra. Getting him to elaborate on anything is difficult. Not because he lacks the wherewithal, but because he is genuinely unassuming – one of the most straightforward and laid back people I have ever met.

Now, 24-years-old, signed by Harper comptroller, Kaushik Makwana in 2012 after ‘outgrowing’ the Lads’ Club, Brown – one senses – is gazing out over a sun-drenched, flower-filled field that no one else can see. His mellow disposition has managed to detach itself from the harshness of those table tennis numbers by which we are all judged: 17% (2011/12), 24% (2012/13), 29% (2013/14).

He is improving. The Scott Brown performance chart without a labelled Y-axis looks half decent. To a private establishment bent on efficiency and big returns, however, his contract would not be renewed.

What of the future? “Been playing penhold since March [2014], but I’m getting little bits sorted then I’ll be pro at penhold lol.”

Such a table tennis grip is traditionally Chinese – difficult to master for most westerners who prefer the ‘shakehand’ style. The wrist moves more freely. The player no longer has a crossover point. Given the shorter reach, players tend to stay closer to the table needing faster footwork and good stamina.

I recall Brown playing quite deep which makes such a move rather odd. Perhaps it’s those flowers again. And another marriage.

If you hang around the corridors at Harper Green Leisure Centre long enough on a Tuesday night, you will stumble across a man who claims that Steve Barber is the best table tennis player in England. No medication has yet been found on the said individual, but suffice to say the numbers do not back up such an assertion.

A quick examination of the ETTA’s website reveals that it is German-based, Liam Pitchford – with 4370 ranking points – who currently holds the coveted crown; regular matches for TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen against the likes of Zwischenstand Dusseldorf’s Timo Boll typifying his week’s work.

Barber, on the other hand – a Bolton TTL Premier player – routinely plies his trade against relative unknowns including Frederic Turban. And his stats over the last three seasons read as follows: 35% (2011/12); 28% (2012/13); 35% (2013/14). One could say Barber is back where he was two years ago but that would be to define him incorrectly.

Rarely seen with a grimace on his face, Barber is representative of everything good about the game. Approachable, allowed out “four nights a week” by his “understanding wife” in order to pursue his mini-dreams and guzzle the odd beer, and firmly appreciative of the nourishment that the Bolton League provides, Barber views life simply yet keenly.

He is symbolic of a certain caste of men who stopped ageing at 29. The wisdom increases and the body continues its inevitable slide, but the boyish longings of yesteryear remain: a beautiful partner; meeting up with friends; a damn good TT session with the occasional clubbing shot.

Upon first meeting Barber, you wonder, you stew momentarily, you question whether anyone, anyone can be so buoyant yet sincere. There is no religious zeal about the man, no upbeat fakery – just an upturned smile; a signal to all that laughs are expected, that humorous observations need to be made.

A Ladybridge regular, one of only six men to play all 66 matches in the Premier Division this season, Barber’s proud Scarlet Letter-like scalps have included Radcliffe’s Michael Dore (44%), Little Lever’s Ron Durose (58%), Radcliffe’s no.2, Robert Hall (60%) and Hilton’s Jordan Brookes (62%).

Asked how he managed to turn over such an array of superior talent, Barber’s modesty rolled before me: “Me and Mick always have a great game. To beat Mick I have to work hard. Rob is a very good player but can easily get frustrated with his own game which he did against me. I beat Ronnie at Ladybridge away from his comfort zone of Little Lever and their table. Jordan’s mind was somewhere else that night (I think).”

After the grit and grind of the Winter League (September–April) comes the somewhat gentler Summer League (May–July) which manages to harness man’s goodwill in a manner which would be inconceivable in the preceding months. A cascading ding-dong of sorts, Barber perfectly captures the essence of two of its entrants: “My old teammate, Johnny Scowcroft after every winter season finishes phones me and tells me I am playing in the summer league with him.”

No switching tracks for Barber (best not mention Heaton). No letting pals down. Just grounded loyalty. A rare man he is indeed. Perhaps the Harper Green fellow was right all along.