Asian Games 2018: Pranab Bardhan and Shibnath Sarkar clinch gold

India's Pranab Bardhan (left) and Shibhnath Sarkar pose with their bridge gold on Saturday. Pic/PTI

After winning a gold medal, most athletes want to improve on their performance, but India's gold medal-winning bridge pair of Pranab Bardhan, 60, and Shibhnath Sarkar, 55, are more keen on improving the image of the sport back home.

Bardhan-Sarkar scored 384 points to finish in first place, while China's Lixin Yang and Gang Chen won silver (378 pts) and Indonesia's Henky Lasut and Freddy Eddy Manoppo won bronze (374 pts).

Asked what the medal meant to him, Bardhan narrated an interesting tale: "I'm an accomplished bridge player and have been playing for over three decades now, but in 2002, I learnt that all my achievements count for nothing if my own countrymen do not respect what I do. I had to travel to Montreal [Canada] for the Bridge World Cup, but my passport pages were over, so I got a letter of recommendation to speed up the renewal process.

"However, when I appeared before the senior passport officer, he simply looked me straight in the eye and asked 'aap Canada jua khelne jaa rahey ho? [you are going to Canada to gamble?]'. I was shocked because I thought that mostly only lay people don't know much about bridge, but here, this man would have been an IAS officer or equally educated and even he didn't know. I then showed him my resume and he immediately apologised.

'Bridge is not gambling'
"But this is what we want to change. Bridge has got nothing to do with gambling." Bardhan was over the moon after their thrilling win which earned India its 15th and final gold medal of these Games on Saturday. Sarkar said bridge is a game that is mentally tougher than chess. "It can be nerve-wrecking. I had high fever while playing the final today because that's how tense things can get. You have 13 cards and have to play each and every card with precision, unable to communicate with your partner, yet pre-empting his every move so that it matches yours. In chess, all the pieces are in front of you, but in bridge, no one knows what the other player has," said Sarkar.

Nirmal Rajagopalan, Treasurer of the Bridge Federation of India and team manager here, hoped this gold medal could help convince schools and management institutes back home to include bridge as part of their curriculum.

Encouraging youngsters
"I teach bridge to students at IIT institutes, but that's all unofficial since the respective state governments do not approve of the sport. But the enthusiasm among participants is huge. If only we can take the sport across all age groups and grow it now," Sarkar hoped.

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