The Hindu : Sport / Bridge : Italy in lead

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 05, 2007
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Sport

Sport - Bridge

Italy in lead

R. Jayaram

CHENNAI: Norberto Bocchi, Giorgio Duboin, Fulvio Fantoni, Lorenzo Lauria, Claudio Nunes and Alfredo Versace are together representing Italy for the third consecutive time in the Bermuda Bowl.

In Monte Carlo (2003) they lost in the finals to USA by just one international match point; in Estoril, Portugal (2005) they beat USA by 18 IMPs. And on Thursday in the 38th Bermuda Bowl at Shanghai, they have stormed into the lead after 15 rounds with a total of 278 VPs, in the process displacing continuous leaders so far USA-1 (268).

USA-1 lost its 15th round badly to Argentina (5-25), but still managed to retain its second position. USA-2 scored 50 out of the possible 75 for the day, and is still not in the frame of eight top scorers.

Surprise package

South Africa is in third place with a tally of 251.5 VPs. It is worth recalling that Alon Apteker’s team was convincingly beaten in the semifinals of the recent European Open by ‘Texas’ Venkatesh and his IIT Madras colleagues of the 1978 batch.

It may also be recalled that the latter team lost in the finals of the Indian team selection trials (played in Chennai in February this year) to the current representative Indian Open team at Shanghai.

Within striking distance of the eighth spot at close of play on Wednesday, the Indian seniors (J.P. Goenka, Ashok Ruia, Subhash Gupta, Archie Sequeira, Ashok Vaidya and R. Sridharan) scored 43 VPs in their first two matches, but lost the third to Poland (4-25) to continue in their 11th position, 15 VPs behind eighth placed Australia at the end of the day.

Canada increased its lead to a tally of 295 VPs. While the Indian women slid down in the Venice Cup table, the top positions remain unchanged in this event.

Bermuda Bowl: Italy (278), USA-1 (268), South Africa (251.5), Netherlands (248.5), China SMEG (242), Norway (238) and Australia (237). Venice Cup: USA-1 (288), Germany (276), China Global Times (266), France (258), Denmark (245.5), USA-2, Canada and England (241 each). Seniors Bowl: Canada (295), Italy (267), France (265), Poland (264), USA-1 (259), Indonesia (258), USA-2 (253) and Australia (245).