LAHORE, March 18: While 32 teams, including six from India, would be featuring in the four-day long 12th Balijee International Bridge Championship, starting at the Lahore Gymkhana from Thursday, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have turned down their invitations citing security concerns as the reason.

Showing his disappointment over the matter, Punjab Bridge Association President Ihsan Qadir said on Tuesday that the Indian government issued clearance to all the six teams on Monday, despite the fact that the Pakistan High Commissioner in New Delhi issued visas only a week before.

“But I cannot understand the refusal of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, since the security situation in their countries is not that different from our own,” Ihsan said.

The Delhi Gymkhana and Delhi Bridge Association from India, according to Ihsan, are fielding two teams. The Formidable team, which will be defending its title for the fifth consecutive time and Arun Jain are the other two teams coming here from India. The Formidable comprises Subash Gupta, Sunit Chokshi, Dalal Rajes, Venkat Raman and Patel Prideep Kumar. The pair of Subash and Sunil are the recent winners of the all-India Ram Jan Pairs Bridge Championship.

While providing more details about the championship, its chief organiser Ijaz Ahmad said that 24 teams from Pakistan, including the national champions Allanas along with Aces, Tariq Aces, Inbox, Data Steel and Candyland had confirmed participation.

The competition also includes six ladies’ teams.

Competitions will be held both in pairs as well as team events with the pair competitions taking place on the first two days followed by the team events.

Meanwhile, Ihsan said that a computer device named Bridge Mate would be used in the event for the first time. The device would be placed on all the 24 playing tables to enable fresh results to be conveyed to the main server in a matter of seconds.

A total cash prize of Rs600,000 will be on stake at the four-day championship.

The championship is named after the former Pakistani bridge player M. Iqbal, who has been playing cards at the Lahore Gymkhana for five decades. Balijee is his nickname.

Following are the main teams and their pairs:

INDIA:

Formidable: Subash Gupta, Sunit Chokshi, Dalal Rajesh, Venkat Raman and Patel Prideep Kumar.Delhi Gymkhana I: Mrs Sneh Lata Singla, Ram Anand, Rajiv Anad, Sanjiv Berry, Anju Khana and Nresh Khana.

Delhi Gymkhana-II: Anoop Dhawan, Sneh Dhawan, Deepak Gulhati, Veena Vishwanathan and Madhu Kochar.

Arun Jain: Krishana Kumar, Depak Kumar Tewari, Manas Kumar Subrata Saha and Arun Jain.

Delhi Bridge Association-I: Ashwani Kumar Narang, Sandeep Narang, Dr Sanghi, Satpat Arvind and Raghbir Singh.

Delhi Bridge Association II: Shashi Bala Jain, Sneh Mahajan Jain, Mangat Rai and Madhu.

PAKISTAN:

Allanas: A.R. Allana, Jan-e-Alam Fazli, Rashid Jaffer and Sarfraz Ahmed.

Aces: Izzat Khalil, Ghias Malik, Shoaib Bokhari, Umer Aslam and Rashid Nabi Malik.

Tariq Aces: Tariq Aziz, Javed Khalid, Saeed Akhtar, Dr Javed Chaudhary, Uzair Kamal and Umer Aslam.

Inbox: Khurshid Hadi, Kamal Shoaib, Javed Miran and Tahir Masood.

Data Steel: Tariq Rashid, Rashid-ul-Ghazi, Pervez Mirza and Major Zaidi.

Candyland: Mohammad Ismail, Ziaullah Baig, Mubashir Puri, Khalid Mohiyuddin and Hamid Mohiyuddin.