Gavin Evans and Paul Drinkhall have led tributes to “genius” coach Jia-Yi Liu, who has died at the age of 76.

Jia-Yi oversaw an era of unprecedented success for young English athletes, including Evans and Paul Drinkhall, during a two-decade stint in the performance and coaching department at the then ETTA.

Drinkhall said he would never have reached the heights he did without Jia-Yi and described him as “ahead of his time and pretty much the main man for knowledge of the sport”.

Jia, who was born in Fujian, China, in August 1949, arrived at the ETTA in 1994 in the role of National Junior Coach. He had previously been National Coach at both the Chinese TTA and Dubai TTA, as well as working personally with Chen Xinhua, the former Chinese world gold medallist who later represented England.

Jia-Yi went on to be Performance Director (1997-98), National Coach (1998-2000), National Coaching Manager (200-07), Head Performance Coach (2007-11) and National Performance Coach (2011-13), before taking up the National Coach role with Singapore TTA from 2014-19.

He became an ETTA Vice-President in 2012.

Whilst with the ETTA, he was Men’s Coach at the Commonwealth Games in India in 2010, where England won team silver, as well as at the Commonwealth Championships in 2000, where England won team gold and Matthew Syed won singles gold.

He also coached Terry Young & Alex Perry to doubles gold at the 2001 Commonwealth Championships, as well as leading teams to numerous European and World Championships at Junior and Senior levels and leading coaching at national performance centres in Sheffield and Nottingham.

It is for his success with the England Cadets and Juniors that he will perhaps be best remembered, taking Drinkhall to world No 3 Junior and a silver medal at the 2008 World Junior Championships, as well as a string of medals at European level, including the Junior Boys’ Team gold for Drinkhall, Darius Knight, David Meads and Danny Reed in 2007.

Drinkhall, Knight, Gavin Evans and Damien Nicholls were also World Cadet Challenge Champions in 2005.

Drinkhall said of his relationship with Jia-Yi: “There’s no way I would have achieved anything I did without his input.

“He was second to none in his knowledge of table tennis and I think everybody who saw how he worked would say the same.

“A lot of what he said to us as kids we’d think was crazy at the time, but then everybody was doing the same thing four or five months later. He was ahead of his time and pretty much the main man for knowledge and love of the sport and he dedicated his life to it.

“From a personal point of view, my dad is great and did everything a dad can do, but I was also away a lot from a young age, so Jia took on a bit of a dad role when I was away. I certainly learned a lot from him and took values from him and my family were happy that he was the man doing that because he had very good values, which I try to pass on to my kids.”

Jia-Yi also worked with Jo Drinkhall too and Paul added: “Jo playing a defensive style is quite challenging for coaches, but he was Chen Xinhua’s coach and his knowledge was on a par with or even better than his attacking knowledge. So, he helped Jo a lot about understanding more about the defensive game.”

Gavin Evans, who has followed in Jia-Yi’s footsteps as the current Director of Performance Development, said: “He had a profound effect on English table tennis and changed the lives of so many people for the better, from the likes of Gareth Herbert, Terry Young and Darren Blake through to Paul Drinkhall, Liam Pitchford, Darius Knight and myself.

He was the coach when the programme was in Sheffield and in Nottingham and he dedicated his life to the ETTA for 17, 18 years.

He was known as the multiball king and was ahead of his time in the way he coached and the reason we had so many cadet titles back in the day was due to him being ahead of the curve.

He was a genius and when he was coaching me, he was like a god. There are very few coaches I’ve met who were at his level.

It’s very sad news indeed and my heart goes out to his daughter Lucy and his grandchildren.”

Table Tennis England also received this letter of condolence from the Chinese TTA.