The selection committee of the Bridge Federation of India has picked a 24-member squad, along with six reserves, for the 2018 Asian Games in August. The squad was picked at the conclusion of the third Asia Cup Bridge Championships in Goa on Sunday, where India won gold in the super mixed team event, silver in the seniors, and bronze in men’s and mixed team categories.
The BFI’s selection committee reviewed the performance of various Indian players and took into account many factors to arrive at its decision, including their performance at coaching camps in Pune and Goa, tournament play, reports from the non-playing captains and coaches, and Butler scores of the players at the Asia Cup, according to a press release.
Bridge, a card game, will be featuring at the Asian Games for the first time. A country’s contingent can have a maximum of 24 members across the six events that will feature at the Asian Games – men’s team, mixed team, super mixed team, men’s pairs, mixed pairs and women’s pairs.
The final Indian squad of 15 men and nine women was identified keeping in mind this limit, as well as to ensure that India will be well represented in each of the six events, the federation’s release said.
Squad
Women: Rita Choksi, Feroza Chothia, Hema Deora, Bharati Dey, Marianne Karmarkar, Himani Khandelwal, Kiran Nadar, Aparna Sain, Vasanti Shah.
Men: Pranab Bardhan, Sapan Desai, Subhash Gupta, Rajeev Khandelwal, Ajay Khare, Finton Lewis, Debabrata Majumder, Gopinath Manna, Sumit Mukherjee, Shibhnath Dey Sarkar, Bachiraju Satyanarayana, Jaggy Shivdasani, Arun Kumar Sinha, Rajeshwar Tewari, Raju Tolani.
Reserves: Alka Kshrisagar, Keyzad Anklesaria, Abhijit Chakraborty, Sunit Chokshi, Sridhar Padmanabhan, Sunderram S.