PANAJI
The curtains came down on the PBC Pro Badminton League, an exclusive masters badminton league held at Indoor Stadium, Campal, Panaji as Terminators edged out Smash Squad 90-89 in an edge-of-the-seat finale to emerge 2023 edition champions.
The finals comprised of six doubles matches, 15 points each with the team reaching 90 points first emerging as the winners. Smash Squad, who had former State champion Pankaj Naik in their ranks, were hugely favoured to win but the championship title match saw a reversal in fortunes and a thrilling conclusion as Krushnan Naik and Nitin Mayenkar played a near-flawless final doubles match to edge out Pankaj Naik and Minar Pandit to take their team over the finish line. Smash Squad had to settle for the runners-up place while PBC Gladiators and Panjim Panthers, who lost in the semifinals, were awarded joint-third place prizes.
Earlier in the group stages, PBC Gladiators topped Group A with four out of four wins while Terminators finished second. In Group B, Panjim Panthers similarly topped the group going undefeated with four wins out of four while Smash Squad emerged as the group runners-up. The top two teams of each group qualified for the semifinals. Both the semifinals witnessed upsets as PBC Gladiators and Panjim Panthers, who were the favourites to qualify for the finals, failed to fire. While PBC Gladiators lost to Smash Squad in the first semifinal, Panjim Panthers had to face defeat against Terminators in the other last-four clash.
Special prizes for outstanding performance were awarded to Anirban Sen, Nitin Mayenkar, Krushnan Naik, Sachin Wagle, Dattaprasad Parab, Minal Kamat, Abhishek Goyal and Vrushali Cardozo. The league featured 10 teams -- Terminators, Panjim Warriors, PBC Gladiators, Shuttler Club, The Falcons, Hi Fi Goa, Shuttle Masters, Ruby Realtors, Smash Squad and Panjim Panthers. 160+ of Goa’s masters players which included many former State champions besides national level winners such as Sandeep Kanji, Pankaj Naik, Ashutosh Pednekar, Manjiri Moktali and Vishal Vernekar, competed in the league.
Terminators squad: Amrut Shewade, Anand Gaonkar, Arnold Rodrigues, Jeffrey Dsouza, Jitendra Dhyani, Krushnan Naik (marquee player), M V Amit, Marina Albuquerque, Merwyn Da Costa, Mohit Khandeparkar, Navin Cardoz, Nilesh Nayak, Nitin Mayenkar, Ramnath Shetgoakar, Shailaja Kohli, Shailesh Makaiker, Swapnil Garudi
Smash Squad squad: Abhishek Goyal, Ajay Verma, Anand Rane, Anirban Sen, Ayoob C.K, Edwin Cortez, G Ramaswamy, Gurpreet Singh Khanuja, Kishore Raghubans, Minal Kamat, Minar Pandit, Noel Noronha, Pankaj Naik (marquee player), Poonam Yadav, Sarvesh Narvekar and Sashibhusan Sahoo.
