Local table tennis great Fuarnado Roberts is dead

Tony Becca, Contributing Editor

Fuarnado Roberts, popularly known as Robbie, is dead.

One of the country's greatest table tennis players, Roberts died at the National Chest Hospital on Friday morning.

He was transferred from the Kingston Public Hospital a few days earlier.

A member of Jamaica's team to the first West Indies Table Tennis Championships (WTTC) in Trinidad in 1958, Roberts, Jamaica's men's singles champion on many occasions, won the regional men's singles title on three occasions.

In 1958, he defeated countryman Glen Mitchell in the final. And, after losing to Mitchell in the 1959 final in Jamaica, he returned to regain the title in 1960 while defeating Mitchell in the final in Barbados. He then stopped Jamaican Leo Davis in the final in Trinidad in 1961.

With Mitchell, Davis, Dave Foster, and Maurice Foster as his colleagues, Roberts led Jamaica to the men's team title on a number of occasions, including four straight times from 1958 to 1961.

nine-time winners

In the first 11 years of the championship, Jamaica won the men's team title nine times, losing to Barbados in 1964 and in 1966.

Roberts, along with Mitchell, Davis and Maurice Foster, represented Jamaica at the WTTC in Dortmund, Germany, in 1959.

A colourful all-round player in the days of backspin, smashes and drives, Roberts was a top class retriever, famous for making returns from way off the table and for coming into the table and driving the ball from both wings - from the backhand side and from the forearm side, straight down the line and across the table.

Roberts' favourite shot - a flowing backhand drive down the line - won many points and rounds and rounds of applause for the man the experts rate as second only to Orville Haslam in the history of Jamaica's table tennis.

With a backhand "flick" here and there, however, with delicate shots which had his opponent going the wrong way, Roberts was the spectators' favourite at a time when table tennis was among the people's favourite sport.

As a player of style and range of strokes, Roberts was the best. Only Maurice Foster of cricket fame and a national men's singles champion at age 16, could compare with him.

In the late 1950s, on the grass of Sabina Park, Roberts defeated the ageing Richard Bergman, world men's singles champion in 1936, 1938, 1947 and 1949, in a one-set exhibition match.

In a return match, hastily arranged by Bergman and played indoors at the then world-famous Glass Bucket nightclub in Half-Way Tree, Bergman easily defeated the Jamaican star in straight setts.

Roberts, who served the game as a coach up to recently, was honoured by the Jamaica Table Tennis Association (JTTA) and the Caribbean Table Tennis Federation (CTTF) last year.