Kolkata: 'Formidables’  warmed up late to bag the team event of the  All India Shree Cement Bridge Championship by defeating a fighting ‘Mavericks’, by 9 International Match Points (IMPs) in the final of the tournament at Biswa  Bangla Convention Centre at New Town here on Sunday.

‘Formidables’, consisting of Rajeshwar Tiwari , Sumit Mukhrjee, Kaustabh Nandi, Sagnik Roy, Sayantan Kushari and Kaustubh Bendre, received a purse of Rupees one lac and the winners’ trophy while ‘Mavericks’ represented by Subodh Maskara, Aniruddha Bhattacharjee, Keyzad Anklesaria , Debabrata Majumder , Jaggy Shivdasani and Sandeep Thakral were richer  by Rupees seventy thousand.

The title for the Open Pairs event went to Abhijit  Sarkar and Sujit Bhattacharjee.

In a final between two Delhi teams, ‘Mavericks‘ started confidently and took a huge lead of 37 IMPs ( 41- 4 )  in the first round.

Stung by a big reverse, the ‘Formidable’ pulled up their socks and narrowed down the gaps scoring 20 and 37 against 13 and 25 by the ‘Mavericks’ in the next two rounds.

When the 4th and final round began, Mavericks were leading the race by 18 IMPs.

But the fourth round saw experienced ‘Formidables‘ regaining their touch and with fine acumen collected 26 points against none by  ‘Mavericks’.

Asked to comment on their performance in the first round international  Sumit Mukherjee of ‘Formidables’ said, “I can’t say what happened to us in the first round. But Mavericks did play very well at that round. We are happy that we have been able to reverse the trend in the second and third round before being able to dominate the last round completely .” 

‘Formidables' in the four-round final earned a total of 87 IMPs against 79 by the ‘Mavericks’ .

Following are the top six performers of the Open Pairs event of the championship.

1.Abhijit Sarkar & Sujit Bhattacharjee, 2. Rana Roy & Swarnendu Banerjee, 3.Kaushik Mukherjee & P R Sinha, 4.Badal das& Dr Sumit Bhowmik, 5. Subir Majumdar and Sreeni, 6.Bhabesh Saha and Vibhas Todi.

A separate IMP Pairs event was also held where Arun Jain and Gopika Tandon won the top spot and were followed by Pijush Kanti Baroi and Simon Stocken, Rama Krishna Majumdar and Kalyan Mukherjee, Anusree Jaklan and Soren Dutt and  Aviram Rout and Prabhakar Behuria who took the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th spot respectively.

(Reporting by Manik Banerjee)