The ITTF equipment for detecting an illegal boosted rubber is all a total charade. When a rubber has been boosted it is impossible to hide the deception because the pimples are so incredibly more visible than something that hasn't been treated. The difference between a regular rubber and a boosted rubber is light and day.
The official testers also know this basic fact but choose (or told) to turn a blind eye and just use a gadget that is not fit for purpose. The ITTF could stop illegal boosting immediately if they used a bit of common sense.
Unfortunately they don't really want to stop the pros from doing it.
Say someone brings out 1 million bucks to offer as bonus.
How exactly is racket control going to check it?
stretching of rubber during gluing is allowed. Well, rather, there is no rules against it.
pimples visible can be from stretching, or from older sheets too. There is ruling on the color grade, there is no ruling on age of topsheet or how visible it can be to be deemed boosting and not gluing.
Then how about those tensored rubbers from the manufactory? Who is policing those?
racket control is a bunch of umpires who has almost no tools (nor printed copies or digital copies of the hundreds of LARC data - at most they just have the LARC number).
So even if they have all the tools in the world and all the data, how are they going to measure it when the top sheet is on the sponge? LARC is top sheet off the sponge. Are we talking about some lab equipment or xray machine to see through the topsheet to give a computerized measurements of how the pip has expanded? and with gluing/stretching or boosting?
So, there is so much noise going on, but it is something that is almost impossible to measure and where there is even a slight of doubt, it cannot be deemed reliable.
This as I said, is no different to the 16cm service toss rule.
They just measuring with the naked eye at a good distance from the player, with the new hall now with black background and strong lights.... they better be hiring snipers to be umpires
