Countdown for the staging of the Odisha Snooker Premier League (OSPL) started on a fervent note today with franchise owners of the four participating teams unveiling respective jerseys here at the Vintage Club, where the first of its kind event in the state, featuring four cueists in each team, will take place from September 2 to 6.

Teams will meet each other in round-robin format and the team that finishes at top of the league table will qualify for the final directly. Teams finishing second and third will meet each other in an elimination match to determine other finalists. The champion team will receive a cash prize of Rs 60,000, while first and second runners-up will be given Rs 30,000 and Rs 15,000 respectively.

All the franchise owners expressed confidence of their teams emerging champions. ``All four teams are evenly matched, comprising young and experienced players. We expect all the matches to be hard-fought and exciting affairs,’’ said Satyadeep Das, co-owner of host Vintage Club. ``It will also be a rare experience for cueists to play in a team event and earn money,’’ he added.

Earlier this month, 24 leading cueists joined the auction and 16 among them were bought by the four franchises _ Q-ing Saddle, Baize Rulers, Purple Squirrel and Blue Hawks. State billiards champion Subrat Das and his Bhubaneswar citymate Rakesh Roshan Pradhan emerged as the joint-costliest cueists with price tag of Rs 11,000 each.

Each franchise owner had to register their team by paying a fee of Rs 5,000 each. While buying four players of their choice, Blue Hawks and Q-ing Saddle spent their entire budget of Rs 20,000 each, while Purple Squirell and Baize Rulers spent Rs 17,500 and Rs 18,000 respectively. If OSPL is set to come to existence, lot of credit should go to Mahavir Group of Institutions, which is the main sponsor of the event.
TEAMS, FRANCHISE OWNERS, PLAYERS WITH PRICE:
Q-ing Saddles (Owned by Ashwini Kumar Patnaik and Sumeet Hembram of Autojinx): Rakesh Roshan Pradhan (Rs 11,000), Ahsan-ul Haque (Rs 2,000), Satyadeep Das (Rs 3,500), Chirag Arora (Rs 3,500).
Baize Rulers (Owned by Mishal Swain of Blue Tech Products Pvt Ltd): Nishant Biswal (Rs 8,500), Siddharth Sen (6,500), Kunal Agarwal (1,500), Akash Mohapatra (Rs 1,500).
Blue Hawks (Owned by Shyam Agarwal and Mrunmay Biswal of JS Industries & Cresco Constructors Pvt Ltd): Jeet Kishore Das (Rs 9,500), Jiten Sarangi (Rs 6,000), Amiya Ranjan Nayak (Rs 3,500), Anuj Panda (Rs 1,000).
Purple Sqiurrel (Owned by Govind Prasad Sharma of Purple Squirrel): Subrat Das (Rs 11,000), Subhranshu Kar (Rs 3,500), Saurya Prasad Patnaik (Rs 2,000), Sureet Singh (Rs 1,000).
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PHOTO: Franchise owners unveiling team jerseys in Bhubaneswar on August 28, 2015.