March 29: An Indian card quartet that included two Calcuttans reached the pre-quarters of the Spring North American Bridge Championships in Kansas City this month, an achievement that seven-time national champion and team member Sumit Mukherjee called the country's "best performance" in a major international competition.
Apart from the star bridge pair of Sumit and Debabrata Majumdar, residents of Birati and employees of Indian Railways, the team to Kansas had comprised captain Kirubakara Moorthy and Krishnan Ramaratnam, both from Chennai.
The open tournament, organised by the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) between March 9 and 19, is one of the high-profile events in the circuit and attracts top players from across the world.
This year, more than 8,000 players - divided into 64 teams - took part in the knockout tournament. Most teams had six players split into three pairs, with two pairs playing and another as a reserve. The Indian team and a few others had just four players or two pairs.
Each team was required to play against another over four sessions, each comprising 15 boards. This worked out to 60 boards a day between two teams. On each table, there was an opaque screen to ensure that the players could see one opponent but not their partners, eliminating the chances of what Australian cricket captain Steve Smith might have described as a "brain fade" (read: communication through gestures).
The Indian team was seeded 62nd at the event and played the third-ranked team in the first round. The US team was the winner of the Summer Championships of the ACBL. But the Indians pulled off a big upset, beating the Americans by 10 points. "We were the underdogs. Beating them was a huge morale booster," Sumit told Metro.
In the next round, his team beat a higher-ranked Chinese squad by an even bigger margin. The pre-quarters loss was to another US team. "This US team was not as strong as the one we beat in the first round, but it was not our day," Sumit rued.
The captain had taken ill before the game. But since the Indian team did not have a reserve pair, he was forced to play.
Back home, praise continues to flow. "It was a great performance. Sumit and Debabrata are one of the best pairs. With age on their side, they can only improve," said Arijit Guha, secretary of the West Bengal Bridge Association.
Hemant Jalan, a 61-year-old Calcuttan living in Ballygunge, had led his side to victory at the Commonwealth Nations Bridge Championship in Delhi in 2010. But his team did not get the gold because of a quirk in the rules. Being the host country, India was allowed to put up one official team. The other teams were classified as invitees. Hemant's team was one of the invited teams. Unless a team is an official one, it does not qualify for gold.
