Home UPDATES Gujarat Kings win first Cue Slam-Indian Cue Masters League

Gujarat Kings win first Cue Slam-Indian Cue Masters League

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The inaugural edition of Cue Slam-Indian Cue Masters League was won by Gujarat Kings held from 19th-25th August 2017. Gujarat Kings triumphed 3-0 over Delhi Dons in the final at the Rajpath Club in Ahmedabad.

The Kings team, comprising Andrew Pagett, Daria Sirotina, Alok Kumar, Sourav Kothari and Brijesh Damani with Ashok Shandilya as coach, took the winners cheque of 20 lakh and the trophy. The Kings’ icon player Andrew Pagett better known as ‘Welsh Wizard’ showed his class both in the semifinal and final. In the semifinal, he defeated India’s Pankaj Advani.

In the opening 6-red mixed-doubles rubber, the 35-year-old combined with Sirotina to beat Kelly Fisher and Malkeet Singh 16-13, 50-0.

In the second rubber, the match-up of ‘icons’, Pagett got on a roll, crushing his Dons counterpart Fischer, a 6-red specialist, 24-11, 44-1. Pagett played plenty of safety shots in the first frame which he won 24-11, but crushed Fisher in the second. Trailing 35-1 and needing to play out of her skin to take it into a third frame, the latter fell apart, and the Kings found themselves up 2-0.

Then, in the 9-ball singles, Alok Kumar ran up a 3-0 lead, but Manan Chandra pulled back three — he took the sixth in a break-to-finish. However, Alok returned the favour in the deciding seventh rack, to close it out in style for Gujarat Kings.

This is the first-ever Cue Slam-Indian Cue Masters League held in India. The League featured a shot-clock; players took their shots within 15 seconds, with a 10-minute span for each frame. The fans also encouraged by cheering their players during the games, unlike in traditional cue sports which demands silence.

The League featured five teams: Gujarat Kings, Chennai Strikers, Hyderabad Hustlers, Bengaluru Buddies and Delhi Dons. The players included:

Gujarat Kings: Andrew Pigget (Icon), Daria Sirotina, Alok Kumar, Sourav Kothari, Brijesh Damani. Coach: Ashok Shandilya.

Chennai Strikers: Pankaj Advani (Icon), Vidya Pillai, Dharminder Lilly, Faisal Khan, E. Pandurangaiah. Coach: G. Kishore Khurana.

Hyderabad Hustlers: Amir Sarkhosh (Icon), Amee Kamani, Kamal Chawla, Lucky Vatnani, Anuj Uppal. Coach: Manoj Kothari.

Bengaluru Buddies: Darren Morgan (Icon), Anastasia Nechaeva, Sundeep Gulati, Varun Madan, Laxman Rawat. Coach: Derek Sippy.

Delhi Dons: Kelly Fisher (Icon), Laura Evans, Pushpender Singh, Manan Chandra, Malkeet Singh. Coach: Tanuj Kohli.

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PoulomiKundu started her career in 2000 as a freelance journalist in Hindustan Times. Soon after she was selected an intern in Zee News, Kolkata. After her post- graduation in English, Poulomi joined the leading television production house of eastern India, Rainbow Productions. She was a journalist in Khas Khobor, a Bengali news magazine programme in Doordarshan and also headed the post production department of another programme, Khas Kolkata. In 2004, Poulomi moved to Delhi as a creative writer in an advertising agency, Brand Stewards Pvt. Ltd. In 2005, she again shifted her base for a better opportunity and that in Mumbai. There she got the job in Raa Media Pvt Ltd. as an associate director of two programmes for Doordarshan-Yuva and Paisa Vasool. In the meantime, she also wrote features in DNA as a freelancer. Poulomi directs promotional videos, develops scripts for films for Corporate and NGOs. But an ardent sports lover, Poulomi always had an urge to contribute somewhere in the field of sports. Her love for sports started from an early age when she played gully cricket and football for local teams. Academics and professional hazards sometimes took her away from her passion, but it never died in her. She always nurtured the never-ending dream. So she materialized her dream in the form of ‘SPORTSAVOUR’. It is an online sports portal that serves sports with the tagline ‘For the indigenous, unconventional, unknown’.

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