Railways lead

NEW DELHI, April 20: It would be fitting if the Selected Pairs event for the Agarwala Trophy ended in a cliff hanger like the Gurudutt Trophy final and all indications are that it would be so on the penultimate day of the 29th Summer National Bridge Championships being conducted at the Raj Mahal Hotel at Kochi according to information received here. Sixteen pairs will be playing eight boards against each other to decide the winner. After five rounds of the scheduled 15 rounds, Sujit Bhattacharjee and N.P. Kabiraj of the Railways were leading the pack with 94.8 VPs. Their 92 VPs came from the full complement of 25 VPs collected from two matches, a draw which fetched 15, a losing share 14-16 and a loss in the fifth round when they got only 13 VPs. They have been awarded a carryover of 2.8. Maharashtra’s Sunil Machhar and Prakash Dalvi who had a carryover of 1.6 scored 88 VPs in the five rounds for a 89.6 VP aggregate. This pair has an unbeaten record though their margins of victory have not been so big.They got 21, 16, 18, 17 and 16 VPs.

J Prathihari and A. Rout, the Orissa pair who were given a 9-21 VP drubbing by Machhar-Dalvi in their opening match, collected 72 VPs from the next four outings and their 5.8 carryover put them in the third spot. Clustered together and in the 4th, 5th and 6th positions were Andhra’s A. Balaram and K. Suryanarayana 86.1 VPs (5.1 C/o), Karnataka’s N. Rajachandra and R. Venkatesh with 85.9 VPs (1.9 C/o) and holders, R. Shreedharan and R. Tolani with 81.4 VPs (0.4 C/o). Bengal’s pair, Kamal Mukherjee and Subrata, mustered only 72 VPs, losing three matches and were occupying the sixth place. Remaining positions were taken by T. Ghosh-T. Mukherjee 80.5 VPs (6.5), 2. R. Bhiwandkar-A. Lele 80.0 VPs (0.0), M Mukherjee-R Roy 72.9 VPs (0.9), S Bose-M. Das 71.2 VPs (2.2), S.Roy-P.K. Ghosh 69.4 VPs (4.4), K.V.S. Manian-Dr. A.N. Rao 69.2 VPs (0.2), R Kini-N.K. Gupta 68.1 VPs (6.1), A. Natu-Dr. C.A. Limaye 64.0 VPs (2.0).