On Wednes­day, in the Bil­liards Sports Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s Na­tion­al Pool League (NPL), two women came up trumps for their re­spec­tive teams in the Pre­mier Di­vi­sion 8 Ball com­pe­ti­tion. Karen Ram­cha­ran and Sal­isha Lochan, two of the top women pool play­ers in the coun­try, proved that they de­serve their places in the play­ing team and are no longer there as mere­ly to­ken rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

At Bil­liards Place, Aranguez, Ram­cha­ran helped her Sikar­i­oz Bil­liards Club team de­feat the Rox­bury Hus­tlerz 4-1.

Ram­cha­ran, who is the Na­tion­al 9 Ball women’s cham­pi­on, was drawn to play in the fourth game against vet­er­an Sha­heed ‘Fly’ Kon­di­ah.

The match scores stood at 2-1 in Sikar­i­oz’s favour. Ram­cha­ran fell be­hind af­ter the first frame, with Kon­di­ah seem­ing­ly ea­ger to pull his team lev­el, but Ram­cha­ran, fight­er that she is, bounced back to take the sec­ond, third and fourth frames.

The third frame was an im­pres­sive ta­ble run, where she cleared all sev­en of her balls and the eight ball. Kon­di­ah, who was at this point some­what shell­shocked, had to shake off the on­slaught and de­cid­ed to launch a coun­ter­at­tack. He start­ed with a break and run, and fur­ther wins in the sixth and sev­enth frames en­sured the game would go to a de­cid­ing sev­enth rack. The two play­ers ex­changed punch­es, with Kon­di­ah now the more con­fi­dent af­ter com­ing back from death’s door and know­ing that a loss would con­demn his team to de­feat.

He even­tu­al­ly took con­trol of the en­counter af­ter some easy miss­es by Ram­cha­ran and had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to win with a bank shot of the 8 ball in­to the side pock­et. He made the shot, but the ap­plause from his team­mates quick­ly turned in­to a heavy sigh as the cue ball al­so hit the rail and slow­ly rolled in­to the cor­ner pock­et on the oth­er side.

Game over with Ram­cha­ran win­ning a most thrilling en­counter 4-3 and giv­ing her team an unas­sail­able 3-1 lead.

At Reno’s, San­gre Grande, Orinoco A was host­ing the top team, Unit­ed Stars, with home girl Sal­isha Lochan tak­ing on Ravy Joseph, the for­mer­ly self-pro­claimed ‘youngest and bad­dest’.

The dif­fer­ence in this par­tic­u­lar en­counter was that the Unit­ed Stars had al­ready sewn up the match in the game be­fore. Nev­er­the­less, brag­ging rights are re­al in this pool fra­ter­ni­ty, and the ig­nominy of los­ing to a ‘girl’ will take some get­ting over. With that in mind, Joseph was stick­ing with the script and jumped out to a two-frame lead.

Lochan, not will­ing to roll over, bounced back to win the third rack. Joseph, how­ev­er, reached the hill first with a win in the fourth frame. The script Joseph was read­ing sud­den­ly changed as Lochan de­cid­ed to rewrite the sto­ry, record­ing three suc­ces­sive wins to cap a re­mark­able come­back and win in an­oth­er en­thralling en­counter, 4-3. And even though the Orinoco side lost on the night, they would feel some mea­sure of suc­cess, be­ing one of on­ly three teams in the NPL Pre­mier Di­vi­sion, which fea­tures fe­male play­ers.

On­ly Ram­cha­ran and Lochan have fea­tured in match play thus far. Brit­ney Jagdeo is on the Unit­ed Stars ros­ter while in the NPL first di­vi­sion; Sh­er­nice Ma­haraj-Leza­ma (Pan­thers), Ebun Samuel (Scotchie’s Spar­tans), Rox­anne Bap­tiste (Cen­tral Stars B) and Ele­na Mar­tinez (Ago­ra Stingers) take the to­tal of women in­volved to sev­en, up from four in the pre­vi­ous 9 Ball com­pe­ti­tion.

That num­ber is ex­pect­ed to grow even fur­ther with a new team, In­vic­tus, which will fea­ture the up-and-com­ing Per­sad sis­ters, al­ready reg­is­ter­ing for the next league.

Round 7 Re­sults (Pre­mier Di­vi­sion)

(1) Unit­ed Stars de­feat­ed (11) Orinoco A 3-2

(2) Ri­valz de­feat­ed (13) Scotchie’s Spar­tans 5-0

(3) The Mer­ce­nar­ies de­feat­ed (7) Cen­tral Stars 4-1

(4) The Un­touch­ables de­feat­ed (12) Princes Town Un­der­dawgs 3-2

(5) Cen­tral Pre­mier PC de­feat­ed (10) UD As­sas­sins 5-0

(8) Sikar­i­oz BC de­feat­ed (9) Rox­bury Hus­tlerz 4-1

(6) Shoot­ing Stars – Bye

Note: Num­bers in brack­ets = Po­si­tion on stand­ings

Wednes­day’s Round 8 Fix­tures

Rox­bury Hus­tlerz vs Orinoco A at Rox­bury, Cunu­pia

Scotchie’s Spar­tans vs Cen­tral Stars at Shindig, Curepe

UD As­sas­sins vs Ri­valz at Up­per Deck, St. James

Shoot­ing Stars vs Cen­tral PPC at Pyra­mid, Gas­par­il­lo

Unit­ed Stars vs Princes Town Un­der­dawgs at Lucky’s, Williamsville

The Mer­ce­nar­ies vs Sikar­i­oz BC at Lucky’s, Williamsville