Indian Railways "A" snatch the lead in Ruia Gold

Chennai, Dec 7 (IBNS) Strong contender Indian Railways "A" found their form and snatched the lead in the main team event for the Ruia Gold Cup with 101.98 Victory Points (VPs) at the end of the penultimate round of the pre-quarter final stage in the 53rd Krishnapatnam Port Winter National Bridge Championship at Sports Development Authority Indoor stadium here Wednesday.

Last year's title holders Formidables from Delhi , after leading the field on the first three days are lagging behind a little and are at the third spot behind Manyawar (101.78VPs) from Maharshtra with 98VPs..However all of them are almost certain to move into the quarter finals from where the competition would be held in knock-out basis.

Other teams which are also likely to move into the quarter finals of Ruia Gold are Maya Mira from Delhi ( 91.43 VPs), Indian Mavericks from Karnataka, Malani from Andhra Pradesh ( 88.96VPs) , Bimal Sicka ( 83.17 VPs) and Poddar Developers ( 80.82 VPs) from Maharshtra, and Shree Cement from West ( Bengal ( 79.50 VPs).

The above mentioned teams apart Indian Railways "B" from West Bengal Texan Aces and Nest Inn from Tamil Nadu, Bajaj Nagpur and Priyar IV from West Bengal also have a chance to make it to the last eight stage if they can improve their performance in the remaining two sessions of the sixth and last pre-quarter final round.

Meanwhile in the event for Ruia Silver trophy Choudhury's Combine from Rajasthan and Mahanadi Coal Field from Odissa are fighting neck to neck to grab the top spot scoring 162.37 and 160.84 VPs respectively at the end of the 9th round of twelve team round robin league today.

With a couple of more rounds to go and about eight points behind Mahanadi are Fourth Suit from Maharashtra with 152 .89 VPs. They apart Shabaz and Samadhan Bridge Academy, both from Maharshtra and T Bose from West Bengal also have some outside chance to win the title.

They have so far notched up 152.89, 148.79 and 146.05 points respectively in Ruia Silver which is being held for the lesser rated players.

In the Mahendra Niranjan IMP Pairs event players from West Bengal are occupying the top three spots at the end of the four out of total six sessions.

While C S Mazumdar and P K Mukherjee led the field with 167 International Match Points (IMPs) while Shibnath De Sarkar / Pranab Bardhan and Pritish Kushari and S Dutta are in the second and third position with 159 and 151 IMPs respectively.

Following are the other top scorers in IMP Pairs event today"

NirmalJain/Alok Daga (137.82 ), Prasad Keni/ Finton Lewis (134), Farookh Dadubhoy and /Sunil Verghese (132), Ramakrishna Mazumdar and Sujit Sur ( 120), A Kundu/S Dey ( 112) , B S Shastry/ Col. S K Rao ( 112),Badal das/ P S Mukherjee (105), Kamal Mukherjee/ Debashish Roy (104), Tanmoy Ghosh / S das ( 102) and R Sridharan/ Jeroo Mango ( 100). (EOM)

(Reporting by Manik Banerjee)