Clint Bachan be­came the toast of the cue sports fra­ter­ni­ty in T&T ear­ly on Sun­day morn­ing when he sealed vic­to­ry in the in­au­gur­al Men’s Na­tion­al 9 ball Sin­gles Cham­pi­onships. Bachan, who played Zu­bir Sankar in the fi­nal, came away a com­fort­able win­ner, eleven frames to one.

The Bil­liards Sports Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T (BSOTT), the Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Body for all cue sports, com­plet­ed its tri­fec­ta of Na­tion­als with the 9 Ball cham­pi­onships, which start­ed on June 14 and con­tin­ued on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day of the fol­low­ing week. The tour­na­ment start­ed off at two venues, Pyra­mid Sports Bar in Gas­par­il­lo and Lucky Sports Bar in Williamsville. The last 32, how­ev­er, was held ex­clu­sive­ly at Lucky’s.

BSOTT pre­vi­ous­ly host­ed the Na­tion­al 8 ball and Na­tion­al 10 ball tour­na­ments in 2023 and 2024 re­spec­tive­ly. This, how­ev­er, was the first time in Na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion that BSOTT moved from the full dou­ble elim­i­na­tion for­mat to a dou­ble elim­i­na­tion up to the last 32. At that stage of the com­pe­ti­tion, the last 16 play­ers from the win­ners’ brack­et and the fi­nal 16 from the losers’ side would con­test the knock­out phase.

The 9 Ball ver­sion, which is the most pop­u­lar of the Pool dis­ci­plines glob­al­ly, broke the record for par­tic­i­pa­tion in a Na­tion­al Men’s tour­na­ment with 102 play­ers, sur­pass­ing the 75 for the 8 Ball and 79 for the 10 Ball.

Bachan’s win en­sured that a new name would grace the pages of BSOTT’s Na­tion­al Pool his­to­ry books. The pre­vi­ous edi­tions were both won by Aaron Raghoo­nanan with Bachan fin­ish­ing sec­ond in the Na­tion­al 10 ball, so this vic­to­ry would be es­pe­cial­ly grat­i­fy­ing.

Things did not be­gin well for the even­tu­al cham­pi­on, as he sur­pris­ing­ly lost a close first match to Adri­an Man­ga­roo, 5-7 to force him in­to the losers’ brack­et. That loss could have been a bless­ing in dis­guise as he found his form to win eight match­es on the trot. He start­ed with a 6-3 win over Ravi Bab­wah, a 6-2 win over Rudy Ram­baran and a 6-2 re­sult over Andy Sir­ju. That took him to the fi­nal 32 and that is where the fire­works be­gan.

In the knock­out, Bachan took out two of the tour­na­ment favourites, Raghoo­nanan, the two-time Dutch Caribbean Cham­pi­on (2025 & 2024) and Sham Jagerssar, the TT Mas­ters Cup cham­pi­on. Those two wins would have pro­vid­ed the fil­lip for Bachan to go all the way.

On his way to the cham­pi­onship, he de­feat­ed Raghoo­nanan 7-1, Jagerssar 7-4, Ravi Sood­een 8-6 and Adri­an Mo­ra 9-2 be­fore cruis­ing in the fi­nals against Sankar. This is not the first time Bachan has tast­ed glo­ry un­der the BSOTT um­brel­la. In 2023, he was crowned na­tion­al snook­er cham­pi­on. And Pri­or to BSOTT, in 2008, he al­so won Na­tion­al ti­tles in 8 and 9 ball, un­der a pre­vi­ous cue sports ad­min­is­tra­tion. Bachan, who is the Man­ag­er and In­struc­tor at Cue Sports Acad­e­my, took home $7,000 and the win­ner’s tro­phy for his win.

Sankar, mean­while, will re­ceive $3,500 along with the run­ner-up tro­phy. His jour­ney to the fi­nal was slight­ly dif­fer­ent; he won his first match 7-4 to Ku­mar Singh but was beat­en 3-7 by Damien Bis­nath, to be pushed in­to the losers’ brack­et. He ad­vanced to a Round 3 match-up against Ja­son Khan af­ter Brent John, his Round 2 op­po­nent, failed to show. He beat Khan 6-4 and was al­so a 6-4 win­ner over Kaz­im Daniel to reach the last 32. In the knock­out stage, Sankar beat Pe­dro Salazar 7-3, Shakar Beep­han 7-5 and Desmond Nicholls 8-5 to book a re­match with Bis­nath.

On this oc­ca­sion, he would ex­act a mea­sure of re­venge on Bis­nath, al­beit in a tense hill/hill en­counter, which end­ed 8-7. That bat­tle may have tak­en every­thing out of Sankar, as he just could not mea­sure up to Bachan’s ex­e­cu­tion in the fi­nal.

Bis­nath and Mo­ra, un­like the top 2, went through the tour­na­ment un­de­feat­ed up to the semi­fi­nals. They both agreed to split the third and fourth-place purse. Bis­nath, who in­ci­den­tal­ly was a fi­nal­ist in the Na­tion­al 8 ball in 2023, would have been hop­ing to, at least, get back to the cham­pi­onship match.

Round­ing off the top eight places were Ravi Sood­een, Anil Ra­mad­har, Desmond Nicholls and Amar Ram­lal. The record turnout af­ford­ed BSOTT the lux­u­ry of pay­ing out cash prizes to the top 16 play­ers. Michael Lochan, Marouf Mo­hammed, Ravy Joseph, Adri­an Lo­gie, Ravi Goorah, Kirk Ram­sawak, Beep­han, Nicholls and Jagerssar com­plet­ed the list of prize re­cip­i­ents.

Next up for BSOTT will be the Women’s Na­tion­al 9 Ball Cham­pi­onships this com­ing week­end at Lucky’s Sports Bar.