For the third successive year Otters Club, Bandra will sponsor and hosts the Otters-BSAM Mumbai Snooker League 2018, which gets under with the first round of home and away matches scheduled to be played during the first week; Monday, June 10 to 16, 2019. The second week will be played from June 17 to 23 and the third week from June 24 to 30.
A total of 51 teams from 25 club, gymkhanas and institutions will be hoping to pick their perfect winning combinations and fight it out to be crowned Champions of the Otters-BSAM Snooker League.
The BSAM Snooker League offers a total cash fund of Rs 2 lakhs. The winners stand to receive Rs 75,000 and the runners-up will receive Rs 45,000. The losing semi-finalists will get Rs 20,000 each and the losing quarter-finalists would also receive Rs 10,000 each.
The Otters ‘Rockets’ champions in the last two editions are clubbed in Group-A along with CCI ‘Royal Strikers’, Dadar Club ‘Mercenaries’ and MG ‘Lollopops’. Otters ‘Rockets’ will clash with MG ‘Lollipops’ in the first round. Last year’s runners-up Radio ‘Tigers’ are clubbed with MBPT Sports ‘A’, MG ‘Gladiators’ and BG ‘B’ in Group-B.
The Cricket Club of India, Juhu Vile Parle Gymkhana and P.J. Hindu Gymkhana have four teams each, while four clubs have three teams each and nine clubs have fielded two teams each.
All the leading snooker players from Mumbai, including two-time Asian champion Yasin Merchant, Devendra Joshi, Ashok Shandilya, Siddharth Parikh, Faisal Khan, Sarang Shroff, Ishpreet Singh Chadha, Sparsh Pherwani to name a few will be seen in action representing different teams in the Snooker League.
The 51teams have been split into 16 groups (12 groups consists of 3 teams and 4 groups comprise of 4 teams). The top two teams from each group will qualify for the knockout phase of the competition.
Each match is a ‘Best-of-5 Frames contest. The first three frames will have to consist of two 15-Red singles frames and one 9-Red doubles frame. The fourth and fifth frames will be played as 15-Red.