Jer­ry’s of Port-of-Spain, led by Sham Jagges­sar, emerged the win­ner of the Knock­out tour­na­ment on the open­ing night of the Na­tion­al Pool League (NPL), de­feat­ing Board­room of Debe in the fi­nal.

This was at Stro­ker’s Sports Bar in Ch­agua­nas on Wednes­day where the in­ter­im ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee, led by in­ter­im pres­i­dent Naz­im Mo­hammed, gave a short ad­dress out­lin­ing the plans for this sea­son and be­yond. Oth­er mem­bers on the ex­ec­u­tive are Kaz­im Daniel, vice pres­i­dent, Fi­del Mo­hammed, sec­re­tary, Car­los Poy­er, trea­sur­er and Adri­an Don Mo­ra, pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer.

Host­ed by the re­cent­ly formed Bil­liards Sports Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (BSOTT), the NPL will be con­test­ed on Wednes­days at Pool es­tab­lish­ments across T&T, start­ing this Wednes­day.

Fol­low­ing the func­tion, a mi­ni knock­out tour­na­ment was held with all teams, some 60 play­ers, in at­ten­dance.

The NPL fea­tures nine teams rep­re­sent­ing some of the top Sports Bars in Trinidad and will play a se­ries of home and away games, the for­mat of which is a best of five, In­ter­na­tion­al eight ball, with four sin­gles and one dou­bles match­es. Due to is­sues with lo­gis­tics, no teams from To­ba­go are tak­ing part in this the first in­stal­ment but that will change as the league grows.

The oth­er teams are Up­per Deck (St James), Pit N Pub (Curepe), Ken­ny’s (Ch­agua­nas), Foxy’s (Mara­bel­la), Dekko (Princes Town), Club Liq­uid (La Ro­main) and Head­quar­ters (Pe­nal).

The NPL is just the start. Al­so on the agen­da for BSOTT are nine ball and ten ball tour­na­ments as well as de­vel­op­ing a snook­er and bil­liards arm of the as­so­ci­a­tion, the se­lec­tion of a na­tion­al team, all with the hopes of com­pet­ing at re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions.

How­ev­er, in or­der to be recog­nised by the re­gion­al (CUBS) and In­ter­na­tion­al (WPA) bod­ies, the or­gan­i­sa­tion must first be recog­nised by the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs.

An im­pend­ing tour from a Guyanese rep­re­sen­ta­tive team is al­so on the ta­ble for late April.

Ex­cit­ing times are ahead for cue sports in the coun­try and with the game of Pool be­ing con­sid­ered for in­clu­sion at the 2024 Olympic Games in France.

Any­one in­ter­est­ed in be­com­ing a mem­ber or con­tribut­ing in any way you can con­tact the in­ter­im pres­i­dent at 750-1309. Up­dates will al­so be avail­able on so­cial me­dia.