Anyone that has seen Jonathan play knows what he is capable of and believe he should be a top 20 England ranked senior player. If only he could maintain consistency and master that most important part of table tennis – concentration and the mental game. Well, by all accounts he is on his way and last weekend it was reported that he was even seen ‘bouncing around in anticipation of the next point’. People that know Johnny may find this difficult to believe, but did it work?

Well yes. The event in question last weekend was the first ever Barnsley Open Grand Prix, a Tees Sport sponsored Butterfly tournament. The favourite going into the event was Darius Knight, who was untroubled and unsurprisingly went on to win comfortably. However, it wasn’t this that people came away talking about; it was Johnny’s performance and his now famous victory against Wang Zheng (England dummy ranking of 13 in Senior Men’s).

Extract taken from the ETTA website:

“Firstly Jonathan Crawford was a revelation in his first round match with seventh seed Wang Zheng. Racing to a 2-0 lead Crawford was playing out of his skin, and then the match seemed to turn in the Chinese player’s favour, coming back to level at 2-2. Jonathan came out all guns blazing in the last set, but then Zheng matched him point for point. Crawford demonstrated real professionalism to keep his cool under immense pressure from Zheng, showing great maturity to gain a famous maximum win and knocking out one of the favourites”