There are two videos you should see. One is the high lights of Koji Matsushita vs Timo Boll where Koji Matsushita looks awesome. The other is one where he plays William Henzel where KM is always under pressure from WH such that KM can't make as many counter attacks. A defender can wait for the opponent to make mistakes but at some point the competition gets to be good enough where you can't rely on that and the defender must counter attack often to score points.
Here are two contrasting videos