The Rox­bury Shot Callers se­cured the Na­tion­al Pool League (NPL) First Di­vi­sion Nine-Ball cham­pi­onship when they de­feat­ed Top Shooterz Krew 4-1 at their Rox­bury Sports Bar home in Cunu­pia on Tues­day (June 3) night.

The lead­ers for most of the league need­ed a win to be as­sured of vic­to­ry, and they did not dis­ap­point. The match was de­cid­ed by the third game, the dou­bles, af­ter ear­li­er wins for Ku­mar Singh and Bri­an Bis­nath. Rox­bury cap­tain Raj Per­sad was the on­ly ca­su­al­ty on the night for the hosts, and Akash Poon com­plet­ed the 4-1 re­sult.

In the open­ing game, Singh met Amir Balka­ran, and af­ter shar­ing the first two frames, Singh, the wily vet­er­an that he is, showed his class by win­ning the next three. Bis­nath was a bit more ef­fi­cient in his game against Edge Ra­moutar, reg­is­ter­ing four unan­swered racks, in­clud­ing a com­bi­na­tion shot on the nine-ball (tack­le), in the third frame.

Steve Bi­pat and Jonathan Gor­ing were paired to play in the dou­bles en­counter against Rakesh Boodai and Top Shooterz cap­tain, Kevin Ma­habir. The vis­i­tors struck first, but the hosts moved ahead two frames to one be­fore the Ma­habir/Boodai duo won rack four with the hope of staving off an ear­ly win for the hosts. That hope quick­ly sub­sided when frames five and six went the way of Bi­pat and Gor­ing.

With the match al­ready sealed, Per­sad, al­so re­ferred to as El Cap­i­tan, would have want­ed to con­tin­ue the rout against Ren­nie Bha­gan, but he lost the first frame, and won the next two, on­ly to sur­ren­der three frames on the trot to lose 2-4. Per­sad’s first win was an im­pres­sive break and run. Akash ‘Knuck­les’ Poon came up against Ah­mad Shageer in the fi­nal game, and the vet­er­an Poon nev­er looked in trou­ble, run­ning out to a three-to-one lead.

Shageer had wins in the sec­ond and fifth frames, but Poon left noth­ing to chance and closed it out by rack six. Shageer’s sec­ond-frame win was a gold­en nine (9 on the break). It was a just end­ing for a team that led the league for 19 of the 26 weeks of com­pe­ti­tion.

Ten miles away to the north, in Aranguez, the team in sec­ond place, the Sikar­i­oz Bil­liards Club, was do­ing bat­tle with the Unit­ed Stars at Bil­liards Place. Sikar­i­oz were try­ing their best to fin­ish strong in the event of a slip by the Shot Callers and were keep­ing an eye on the Rox­bury match via livestream. Their keen in­ter­est in what was go­ing on at Rox­bury was war­rant­ed, as both the Shot Callers and Sikar­i­oz had sim­i­lar win/loss records, 21 and 4, but the John East­man-led Sikar­i­oz were trail­ing by three games. The Bil­liards Place-based team did what they need­ed to do, and that was win. And they did so in style, sweep­ing the Unit­ed Stars five games to nil. The match start­ed and end­ed with 4-nil wins through Sachin.

Ram­nar­ine in the open­er and Dy­lon King in the fi­nal game. Nes­tled in be­tween those games was a 4-2 win for An­dre Creece, a 4-1 win for the pair of East­man and Al­lan Per­sad, which in­clud­ed two tack­les and a three-foul rul­ing, and a 4-1 win for Mikkel Govia, in­clu­sive of two tack­les and a break and run. The Sikar­i­oz were hop­ing for a mir­a­cle in the Rox­bury match but, in the end, were hap­py for the Rox­bury team. Af­ter all, in 2023, it was a Rox­bury win over the then-lead­ing One Zed’s Shoot­ing Stars that gift­ed the Sicar­ios their maid­en NPL first-di­vi­sion eight-ball ti­tle. It was the first time in the league’s his­to­ry that two di­vi­sions were in­tro­duced, a pre­mier and a first di­vi­sion.

Pock­et Preda­tors, one of the ti­tle hope­fuls dur­ing the first half of the league, fin­ished in third with a record of 19 wins and 7 loss­es. The Bri­an Stod­dard-cap­tained ‘Preda­tors’ were at the top of the ta­ble for five weeks from round four to round eight. They fin­ished their cam­paign with a 4-1 win over Scotchies’ Nu­bian Kings.

Crazy 8’s end­ed up seal­ing fourth place af­ter a 4-1 win over Shoot­ing Stars. Crazy 8’s and Ago­ra Stingers were in a fight for fourth go­ing in­to the fi­nal round with both teams on 15 wins and 10 loss­es. Crazy 8’s just had to win to se­cure the fi­nal spot on the podi­um. The ‘Stingers’ did not do them­selves any favours as they went un­der to Pan­thers 1-4 to fin­ish just out­side of the prizes in fifth.

In oth­er match­es: Lucky Sports de­feat­ed Dekko All Stars 3-2, and JJ Shoot­ers got the bet­ter of Ken­ny’s 4-1.

The Bil­liards Sports Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (BSOTT), in a re­lease, con­grat­u­lat­ed all the teams which took part in the NPL Nine-Ball com­pe­ti­tion and added that it is look­ing for­ward to keen­er com­pe­ti­tion in the NPL Eight-Ball.

Next up for BSOTT and the cue sports fra­ter­ni­ty is the host­ing of the Na­tion­al Nine-Ball Men’s and Women’s Sin­gles tour­na­ments, which com­mence with the men’s on Sat­ur­day (June 14) and the women’s on June 28. Reg­is­tra­tion for both com­pe­ti­tions is now open.