The India U16 team

In this article, we will attempt to share with you the highlights of their quarter final victory along with an inroduction to the players themselves. Let me, however, first start by acknowledging Ms. Rinku Narang who has shared all these beautiful photographs with me for this article.

 

So, the three pairs representing India are as below

Ananya Mehta and Jashith Narang

 

Ananya Mehta looks at bidding as another language of sorts (she speaks 5 of them) and this was one of the major stimulants that brought her to bridge. Over the last year, she has definitely shown some bridge skills as demonstrated in this hand we had reported her playing.

She says "What fascinates me most about bridge is the balance between aggression and caution, especially when it comes to doubles, be it takeout, balancing or penalty and sacrificing at high level contracts".

These tactical decisions are what keep the game fresh and endlessly challenging for me.

Jashith is a thoroughly impressive person, not just on the bridge table, but also off it.

He has won gold medals in several international Maths Olympiads all over the world. Just this last year he has won competitions in Singapore, Russia, the US. He has also won Maths competitions held by Stanford university in subjects like fractals, calculus. He has also won several medals in English all over the world.

In India, he is a National Talent Search scholar.

He is an app developer and has won awards for his apps at MIT for 4 consecutive years. Last year he started his Non Profit Initiative called Tech4Equity wherein he teaches under privileged students.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adhiyaman and Agilan Zodypache

Adhiyaman and Agilan Zodypache are a young pair of brothers hailing from Puducherry. Arguably, they must be among the youngest pair in the competition. Adhiyaman is 13 years old while Agilan is just about 10 years old.

Apart from bridge, they both play badminton and a variant of throwball which is played on roller skates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Viha Gahrotra and Prakhar Bansal

Viha is a girl of diverse talents. She plays the violin, as also the tabla. She loves playing all kinds of card games with her family. She took to bridge like a duck to water.

 

 

 

Prakhar has always shown interest in games with brain power like chess, Rubik’s cube and now bridge. While needing to balance time between academics and bridge, he is still good enough to have taken the country to the semi finals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Koushik Mukherjee

The non playing captain and coach of the Under 16 team has shown his prowess as a coach in addition to his skills as a player.

While a lot can be said about the Unpredictable Guy and Champ, we shall content ourselves with congratulating him on the performance of his team.

While Koushik is the official coach of the team this is perhaps the appropriate places to acknowledge the other coaches of these young players. While Ananya, Jashith, Viha and Prakhar have been coached for a long time by Priya Ranjan Sinha (who is incidentally Koushik's current partner as a player), the Zodypache brothers have been coached initially by a player called Sankaran. The pair has also been supported by EA Bridge and are regular invitees to their open tournaments in Chennai.

 

Disclaimer : All opinions are entirely those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the BridgeFromHome Team.