Mumbai: India’s Under-31 team won the bronze medal in the Teams Event at the 9th World Youth Transnational Bridge Championships in Hefei, China, finishing third in the eight-team final round robin with 82.34 Victory Points.
China’s AGOOFANS took gold (89.96 VP) and China U31 the silver (89.47 VP). India secured the medal despite visa delays and last-minute changes to partnerships.
The team — Anshul Bhatt, Sagnik Roy, Sayantan Kushari, Shubham Acharya, Surajit Bar and Vidhya Patel — was captained and coached by Kaustubh Bendre.
Chinese visas for some players didn’t arrive in time, forcing changes to the playing combinations. Anshul, who had trained extensively with Shubham Acharya, ended up partnering Kolkata-based national player Sayantan Kushari instead.
Shubham partnered Vidhya Patel, who is from Raibidpura, a Madhya Pradesh village known for producing bridge players. These new pairings held the team together until Sagnik Roy and Surajit Bar arrived from Kolkata in time to reinforce the squad. Because of the unforeseen circumstances, Anshul and Vidhya played six of India’s eight qualifying rounds.
India finished seventh in qualifying on August 3 to 4, making the cut for the eight-team final. The final was a round robin on August 5, with each team playing a seven-board match against every other finalist.
On Anshul’s selection to the older age group, coach Bendre said: “Anshul has been selected because he has earned his place, not because of his age or reputation. At 17, he already shows the discipline, composure and partnership awareness expected at the U31 level.”
Anshul runs a school bridge club and BridgeBlitz boot camps that have produced other India age-group players; a BridgeBlitz-trained team reached the semifinals of the 2025 World Youth Teams Championships.
Outside bridge, he built PawPath, a wearable sensor system that analyses dog gait using machine learning, which won an ISEF Grand Award in Animal Sciences and is being developed into a pet-health platform called Sniff.
(IANS)
