Otters Club, Bandra has once again come forward to sponsor 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 week; Monday, June 25 to Sunday, July 1, 2018. The Snooker League is also being supported by Z3 Zodiac Clothing.
Players of the Otters ‘Rockets’ team, winners of the Otters-BSAM Snooker League last year get ready for this year’s event.
Varun Agarwal, Otters Club, Managing Committee member and Chairman of Billiards and Snooker sub-committee said, “Last year when we sponsored the Snooker League everything went well. We even went on to emerge champions. Hence, we (Otters Club) decided to extend our support for another year and the entire Managing Committee backed the decision.”
“Otters Club is one club that would do anything to promote every sport. However, the main interest of the club is swimming, squash and snooker,” Agarwal pointed out.
A total of 52 teams from 28 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 Defending champions Otters ‘Rockets’ are in Pool-A along with MCF ‘Dark Knights’ and MHCL ‘Madcaps’. Otters Rockets and MHCL Madcaps will clash in the first round. Last year’s runners-up ECC ‘Elfies Hornets’ are clubbed with NIA Cuts Miss Hook’ and DG ‘Warriors’ in Pool-I. Elfies and Warrior meet in the opening round.
“We (Otters ‘Rockets’) are a good team with some quality players and I’m confident that we will defend the title,” Agarwal stated.
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.
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 to name a few will be seen in action representing different teams in the Snooker League.
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.
The 52 teams have been split into 16 pools (12 pools consists of 3 teams and 4 pools comprise of 4 teams).