The Bridge Federation of India (BFI) on Monday named 18-member squad for the Asian Games to be held in Hangzhou, China from 23 Sep to 08 Oct
The squad comprises of Open, Mixed and Women teams of six members each. It also named six reserves, two for each team., .
The BFI also announced six -member Senior team for the World Championship to be held at Morocco in August.
The squad was picked up after a coaching camp followed by selection trials held at the of Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Greater Noida from 02 – 18 March conducted under the auspices of the Sports Authority of India. (SAI).
The camp was conducted in 3 phases with the Men’s/ Open team preparation in Phase 1 between 02-07 March, followed by the Mixed team in phase 2 from 10-14 March, and the Ladies and the Senior team in the third Phase between 15-17 March.
Contract bridge is one of the most popular mind-sport in the world and is a Priority Sports under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. It was introduced at the Asian Games in Jakarta in 2018 where India won three medals, a Gold and two -Bronze.
Though the number of Bridge events have been reduced from 6 to 3 this year, the team is confident of improving on its medal tally in this edition of the Games.
Open Team: Jaggy Shivdasani, Sandeep Thakral, Rajeshwar Tiwari, Sumit Mukherjee, Raju Tolani and Ajay Khare
Reserves: Kaustabh Bendre and Sayantan Kushari. Coach: Joyjit Sensarma
Mixed Team: Kiran Nadar, B Satyanarayana, Himani Khandelwal, Rajeev Khandelwal, Marianne Karmarkar and Sandeep Karmarkar
Reserves: Hema Deora and Rana Roy, Coach: Vinay Desai
Women’s Team: Asha Sharma, Puja Batra, Alka Kshirsagar, Bharti Dey, Kalpana Gurjar and Vidya Patel
Reserves: Richa Shriram and Meenal Thakur. Coach: Anal Shah
Senior Team (For the World Championships): Hemant Jalan, Samir Basak, Pranab Bardhan, Badal Das, Sukamal Das and Subrata Saha.