On cue,Gladiators to take on Terminators this weekend

“We gave the club teams freedom to choose a name in addition to their club names to attract the attention of the public,” Devendra Joshi,joint secretary of the BSAM,said.

So,‘Bapacheebhum’ is the name given to the Elphinstone Cricket Club (ECC) billiards team — a slang that refers goofily to the gluteal area of the human anatomy. The name came about thanks to one of the team’s best players — Behram Aga — who helped the team win the title in the previous edition. “Behram would never utter a bad word even when he was frustrated. At the most,when he would miss an easy shot he would shout ‘Bapacheebhum’. This year he is playing for the ECC Lions and so we decided to honour him by naming the team Bapacheebhum,” said Arun Agarwal,a member of the team.

Devendra Joshi’s team — PJ Hindu Gymkhana ‘Purists’ — which comprises other internationals such as Dhruv Sitwala and Chetan Hemmadi,considers itself the exclusive players of billiards. “We are pure billiards players and don’t play any other variation of the sport like snooker or eight-ball,” said Joshi.

The Mumbai Port Trust chose Billi Bongers as their moniker — Billi for billiards and Bongers an “advanced version of bangers”. “Our players love to hit the ball hard especially during breaks. They give the ball a good bang. The bangers just evolved into bongers,” said DG Kasar,captain of the team.

The other teams have been equally witty. The ECC ‘Elves’ could just be a bunch of short people with pointy ears,but there are also called the ‘Gladiators’,‘Terminators’ and the ‘Fearless Cueists’ who attempt to strike fear in their opponents with the help of their tag,while teams like ‘Feathers’,‘Boy’s’ and ‘Cadets’ show their softer side.

Billiards has produced the maximum number of world champions for the country,but still remains fairly unrecognised. While there is no shortage of talent in the Mumbai Billiards League,recognition of this talent might just be helped by such initiatives.