Sport - Bridge

Bimal Sicka’s Team does well

Kanpur: Bimal Sicka’s Team seems to have hit a purple patch in the Golden Jubilee bridge Nationals being played here.

In the Ruia Trophy mini Swiss league, at the end of five rounds, they were lying somewhere in the middle of the bunch of 32 qualifiers with a modest tally of 79 VPs. But they picked up steam thereafter and scored 60 VPs (out of a possible 75) in the last three rounds of that league to get into the quarterfinals as the fifth qualifier.

By virtue of having finished at the top of eight qualifiers, twice winners of the Ruia Trophy, India Blues chose the Sicka team as their quarterfinal opponent and went into the lead by 19 IMPs in the first segment.

The Sicka team hit back strongly thereafter and won the next two segments easily, to prevail 92-56 upsetting the former champion, and cantering into the semifinals.

Indian Railways just recovered on time in the last segment to beat Arun Jain’s team in another quarterfinal. Tolani Shipping narrowly prevailed over Gurukripa by just 2 IMPs and Formidables outplayed Khandelwal by 64 IMPs in the other two quarterfinal matches.

In the IMP pairs event, B. Dey - T.K. Roy have won the MNC Trophy and B.K. Singharoy - S. Singharoy won the Kamalakar Trophy.

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