St Pancras Station recently provided a glimpse of how London 2012 might best be used to encourage more sporting participation. Throughout the station’s concourses, amid the hurried din of rush hour, was the clicking of ping pong balls against bat and table.

Commuters faced Olympians, as Ping! London was launched, a new initiative bringing table tennis out of the leisure centre and onto the streets.

This summer, Ping! will see 100 temporary tables set up in busy areas throughout the capital, linked via challenges and a series of events that ranges from the obvious "The Ping Pong Ball"  to the offbeat "Literary Ping Pong".

Next Summer, the tables will take to the road. They will return in 2012 to allow visitors and residents the chance to play Olympic sport in London’s best known public places. Permanent tables, meanwhile, have been built from concrete in the East London boroughs that will host the Games, ready for anyone to use.

Emphasising the social side of the sport is key to the English Table Tennis Association’s (ETTA) strategy for developing popularity. "Informal participation, alongside club participation is really important to us," said ETTA chief executive Richard Yule. "We think that self-organised people getting together using social media will be massive for table tennis. It’s just so easy to do.

"We also expect there will be people who will come in through that route who will get hooked on the game and find their way into our organised structures."

The informal ways to play sport have been significant sources of growth in recent years, from casual jogging in preparation for a charity 10K to the renting of seaside kayaks. And this is the kind of sporting opportunity most likely to tempt the sedentary off the sofa in the context of 2012, according to research by Professor Mike Weed of the University of Canterbury.

Sports hoping to emulate table tennis with new initiatives - which have been embraced by London Mayor Boris Johnson (pictured) - are likely to encounter some fairly high hurdles, however.

Especially if they look to the same source of funding as Ping!, Sport England.

Deep cuts from the Government department that funds Sport England, Department for Culture, Media and sport, are certain, even after being offset by a raise in the share of Lottery money paid out to sport and the arts.

Speaking to staff at DCMS recently, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "The best-case scenario is still going to be a scenario in which there are going to be bigger cuts than any of the areas we represent have ever had to face, probably in their history."

Sport England’s Olympic legacy plan, originally expected this month, has now been delayed at least until the completion of the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, due to be made public in late October.

Faced with cuts, the national governing bodies of sport may well be inclined to retrench, protecting their traditional club structures. Britain’s sedentary majority will most likely respond by sticking to the sofa - more people are sedentary now than in 2005. The opportunity to use 2012 as a means to sustainably bring more informal sport to the host country’s streets and parks will not come around again.

But there may yet be cause for optimism. Increased media coverage for community sport in the lead-up to the Games, combined with the commercial potential of high-visibility street sport - Ping! is also sponsored by Yahoo! - may still see the private sector make a meaningful contribution.

Mark Dolley is the managing director of Taking Part, a social enterprise working to link 2012 with community sport. He was formerly head of communications for the Olympic Games at the IOC. For more details on Ping! click here