KOLKATA: Like kabaddi, badminton, table tennis and some other sports, cuesports is also looking for a facelift in India. Aiming to make the sport attractive for youngsters to pick it up, the West Bengal Billiards Association (WBBA) is starting the first-ever edition of the
Bengal Premier League
at the
Bengal Rowing Club
in Kolkata this week.
The week-long tournament on the popular IPL format will feature nine top nationally and internationally ranked Indian marquee players who will be joined by 45 state-level players. Nine teams consisting of six players in each side will take part in the meet.
The three marquee players from West Bengal to feature in the tournament are
Sourav Kothari
,
Brijesh Damani
and Shahbaaz Khan.
WBBA president Pradip Saraogi sounded excited about the tournament. "Cuesports is growing in popularity across the country. This is the first time that a Premier League is being organised. The total purse will be about Rs 10 lakh," he stated.
The tournament will be played on a round robin format and the top four teams will qualify for the semifinals. Each match will be played in five frames comprising two frames of 15-Red Snooker, one frame of 100-up Billiards, one game of 6-Red Snooker and one doubles frame of Alternate Shots.
The format ensures that each match is a true test of the players' ability in all types of cuesports which makes it an interesting prospect.
The players too are looking forward to have a different challenge trying their skill in all formats of the game.
The teams are:SHOOTING STARS: Rupesh Shah (Marquee); Sunil Saraogi, Benay Agarwala, Chandan Balmiki, Neeraj Khemka, Jyotirmoy Das
SNOOKING SHOOTERS: Siddharth Parikh (Marquee); Debashish Mukhopadhyay, Vikrant Gupta, Wangchuk Bhutia, Sushil Sarda, Neeraj Sharma
SATRANGI SQUAD: Brijesh Damani (Marquee); Rahul Berlia, Aditya Goenka, Rohit Rajghariya; Shreevardhan Poddar; Sagar Malhotra
PAPPU PENGUINS: Kamal Chawla (Marquee); Siddharth Casyab; Aamer Hussain, Sumit Jhunjhunwala, Nilangshu Haldar, Anil Poddar
CITY KNIGHTS: Dhvaj Haria (Marquee); Ravi Goenka, Rajesh Tulsian, Ankit Kariwala, Terrence Mac, Abdul Miraz
THE ROCKETS: Sundeep Gulati (Marquee); Rishabh Dugar, S.K. Sarfarazuddin, Shakil Ahmed, Akram Khan, Abhishek Kedia
ELVY 147: Shahbaaz Khan (Marquee); Manish Jain, Suniti Damani, Dheerendra Baid, Shivam Saraf, Dhruv Agarwal
CUE MAGICIAN: Sourav Kothari (Marquee); Kingshuk Saha, Shoaib Khan, Arafat Mondal, Gautam Khanwani, Saif Khan
BLACK PANTHERS: Manan Chandra (Marquee); Piyush Bhagat, Arshad Zama, Ramesh Jaiswal, Rohit Malhotra, Mudit Poddar
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