Sports can some­times be a great equalis­er. Based on da­ta, one might be able to pre­dict an out­come, but on the night, some­thing to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent can hap­pen.

This was the case in the Na­tion­al Pool League (NPL) on Tues­day (Feb­ru­ary 25) night.

The Top Shooterz Krew, who were 12th on the 14-team NPL ta­ble, were host­ing ta­ble top­pers Rox­bury Shot Callers. Not many would have giv­en the ‘Top Shooterz’ much of a chance against a ‘Shot Callers’ team in the midst of a sev­en-match win­ning streak.

Top Shooterz cap­tain, Kevin Ma­habir, was drawn to open the in­nings against the wily vet­er­an Akash “Knuck­les” Poon. Ma­habir got off to a quick start, win­ning the first two frames. Poon bounced back to lev­el the game at two apiece. But Ma­habir, who was in­tent on get­ting his team off to a win­ning start, se­cured the next two frames for a sur­prise 4-2 win. Roger Stew­art evened things up for the Rox­bury team with a con­vinc­ing 4-1 win against Aamir Balka­ran.

Stew­art did well to come back from a first-frame loss to reg­is­ter four wins on the bounce, the last of which was a com­bi­na­tion tack­le on the nine-ball. The dou­bles en­counter was next and again, it was a David and Go­liath type en­counter be­tween Edge Ra­moutar and Ah­mad Shageer of the ‘Krew’ and Ken­rick “Mon­ty” Roop­nar­ine and Rox­bury cap­tain Raj “El Cap­i­tan” Per­sad.

The teams split the first two racks be­fore the hosts won two in a row with a break and run in the fourth frame. The Rox­bury duo stole the fifth but the home pair of Ra­moutar and Shageer seemed to want it more and sealed the vic­to­ry in the sixth frame. An­to­nio Boodoo would se­cure the match for the hosts with a 4-2 win against a very steady play­er in Bri­an Bis­nath.

It was a tru­ly in­tense see-saw af­fair with Boodoo win­ning the first (tack­le), third, fifth and sev­enth frames. Bis­nath had a tack­le of his own in the fourth rack. The fi­nal game of the night be­tween Ren­nie Bha­gan and Jonathan Gor­ing, though aca­d­e­m­ic, was al­so an in­tense en­counter which went the full dis­tance.

Gor­ing, who is one of the younger play­ers on the cir­cuit, start­ed with a com­bi­na­tion shot on the nine-ball to take an ear­ly lead. He al­so won the sec­ond frame be­fore Bha­gan hit back with a tack­le and a win in the third and fourth frames. Gor­ing scored an­oth­er tack­le in the fifth rack and lost the sixth be­fore win­ning the hill/hill en­counter 4-3. With the win, the Top Shooterz Krew moved up one spot to eleventh on the stand­ings with five wins and eight loss­es. Rox­bury, de­spite the loss, main­tains their hold on the top spot with 11 wins and two loss­es.

Sicar­ios, who al­so have 11 wins from 13 match­es, re­main in sec­ond spot, one game be­hind the Shot Callers. Sicar­ios paid a vis­it to the Pyra­mid Sports Bar in Gas­par­il­lo to take on the Unit­ed Stars and came away with a close 3-2 win. The vis­i­tors start­ed well with Sachin Ram­nar­ine win­ning his game against Rus­tan Alexan­der 4-2.

The ta­bles turned in the sec­ond game when Clay­ton Ja­goo, the Unit­ed Stars skip­per, beat An­dre Creece by a sim­i­lar 4-2 mar­gin. The dou­bles en­counter al­so went the way of the hosts with Lin­coln Thomas and Vishal Ram­lo­gan tak­ing care of Clint Mara­jh and Mikkel Govia in im­pres­sive fash­ion 4-nil.

The Sicar­ios cap­tain, John East­man, en­sured that the vis­i­tors stayed in con­tention by beat­ing Mer­cil Sam­my 4-1. The fix­ture came down to a de­cider be­tween Al­lan Lawrence of Sicar­ios and Stars’ Ameer Mo­hammed. Mo­hammed looked the bet­ter play­er in the ear­ly go­ing, win­ning two frames on the trot.

Lawrence, who was go­ing in­to the match with a per­fect record of nine wins from nine match­es, pulled a frame back in the third but went fur­ther be­hind when Mo­hammed reached the hill first at 3-1. Lawrence was not pre­pared to see his record blem­ished and roared back to win the next three racks. Unit­ed Stars, de­spite the loss, re­main in fifth spot with a record of eight wins and five loss­es.

In oth­er first di­vi­sion match­es: Pan­thers de­feat­ed Ago­ra Stingers 4-1 for their sec­ond win in a row; Pock­et Preda­tors beat Nu­bian Kings 3-2; Crazy 8’s topped Shoot­ing Stars 4-1; JJ Shoot­ers edged Ken­ny’s 3-2; Lucky Sports up­staged Dekko All Stars 3-2.

In oth­er pool news: The Bil­liards Sports Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (BSOTT) host­ed its first month­ly tour­na­ment for 2025, apt­ly named the Car­ni­val Crack­shot, last Sun­day and for the sec­ond BSOTT tour­na­ment in a row the fi­nal­ists were Sham Jagerssar and Aaron Raghoo­nanan. Jagerssar, as he did in the re­cent Mas­ters Cup, came out on top by a score of 5-2.

The Mas­ters Cup cham­pi­on, on reach­ing the Last 32, had im­pres­sive 5-nil wins against Kaz­im Ali and Adri­an Ba­j­nath, a 5-1 re­sult against Ku­mar Singh, and he then beat Michael Lochan 5-3 be­fore the cham­pi­onship match against Raghoo­nanan. Both Jagerssar and Raghoo­nanan will join sev­en oth­er play­ers who will trav­el to Bonaire for the Dutch Caribbean nine-ball cham­pi­onship in April. Raghoo­nanan is the de­fend­ing Dutch Caribbean cham­pi­on and is the first play­er from the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean to win the tour­na­ment.