The modern allround bat
The six previous profiles cover the extremes: pure control, pure attack, defence, blocking. What is missing is the profile that occupies the centre of the map and that, paradoxically, is the hardest to define precisely. The modern allround bat stands out in no dimension because its design aims to have no shortcomings in any. It is the bat of the player who wants to do everything reasonably well without depending on a single stroke.
The blade uses inner composite — inner carbon, whose position and properties were described in 10.3. Unlike the outer carbon of the attacking profiles (12.3, 12.4), here the fibre sheets sit between the core and the intermediate plies rather than next to the surface. The effect is twofold. On one hand, the additional stiffness of the composite raises the speed ceiling over an all-wood five-ply, which lets the player attack decisively when the chance appears. On the other, the outer plies are still wood, and that wood in contact with the sponge preserves the vibration and the feel that outer composite attenuates. The result is a base that pushes more than the club bat described in 12.2 but informs better than the attacking bat of 12.3. The reference models in this category — Innerforce Layer ALC, Innerforce Layer ZLC and the like — were covered in 10.5.
The rubbers are soft tensors, with sponge below 42° ESN as a rough reference, at maximum thickness or close to it. At this hardness the response curve is progressive: the catapult effect described in 2.4 engages gradually, without the abrupt jump that hard sponges produce on stiff blades. The player feels the ball responding in proportion to what the arm puts in. That progressiveness is the central trait of the combination: it allows everything from a short push to a mid-distance loop to be metered without the bat running ahead of the gesture. It is not a rubber that fires; it is a rubber that accompanies.
The general rule of 11.3 operates here in reverse to the attacking profiles. There, a fast blade called for a rubber to rein it in; here the blade, of medium-high speed, finds in the soft rubber the complement that smooths the response and widens the margin for error. The balance described in 11.2 sits in a zone that tolerates the short game and the attack, the block and the counter-attack alike. It maximises none of those dimensions, but none is compromised.
The asymmetry between sides, covered in 11.4, is usually mild in this profile. Many allround players mount the same rubber on both faces, or close variants within the same family — perhaps a degree more hardness on the forehand. The reason is consistent with the philosophy of the profile: a player after versatility does not want one side behaving radically differently from the other. Transitions between forehand and backhand have to be fluid, and that calls for rubbers of similar character.
The assembled weight runs between 170 and 185 grams. An inner-composite blade weighs somewhat more than an all-wood five-ply but less than robust outer carbon blades, and soft tensors are lighter than hard ones — less dense sponges, a thinner topsheet. The result is a bat that stays manageable over long sessions, without the fatigue the attacking profiles described in 12.3 and 12.4 impose. As argued in 11.5, a contained weight favours manoeuvrability, and manoeuvrability is exactly what a player whose game depends on variety rather than power needs.
This profile carries a risk worth naming: comfortable mediocrity. A bat that does everything reasonably well can become an excuse for never developing any stroke fully. The allrounder who progresses is not the one who stays in the centre of the map but the one who uses the versatility of the equipment as a platform for building specific weapons. That distinction between the stalled allrounder and the developing one is dealt with in 16.4.
The modern allround bat is the Swiss army knife of table tennis: it neither cuts like a scalpel nor strikes like a hammer, but it resolves more situations than any specialised tool.