April 11, 2007	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 22, 1428

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LAHORE, April 10: Fifty players from India will compete with hundreds from Pakistan in the 11th Balijee International Bridge Championship, the country’s biggest event of the game, to be held at Lahore Gymkhana from Thursday to Sunday.

Ijaz Ahmad, the pioneer of the event for the last one decade said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Ijaz said excellent hospitality would be provided to the Indian visitors and who were coming from other cities of Pakistan. Ijaz said he was ready to welcome maximum participants from abroad but there was little interest from the other countries but the Indians's arrival had become a regular feature.

Ijaz, who is organising the event in memory of his father Balijee said around 45 teams from Pakistan and India would compete for the top honour.

Tournament Director, Ihsan Qadir said among the teams from India, the Dharampur Sugar Mill squad, the current Indian champion comprising of Ashok Coel, Krishna Mukerjee, Pritish Kushari and Debassesh Ray, is notable. He said all those players had represented India at international level, therefore, the teams from Pakistan would be facing competitive bridge on all four days.

He said this time 15 teams are from Lahore, 12 from Karachi, nine from India and six from Islamabad, and one each from Abbotabad, Multan and Hyderabad had confirmed the participation.

The strong team from Karachi are Alanas (Rehman Allana, Jan-e-Alam Fazli, Rashid Jaffar and Sarfraz Khan), Miran IV (Javed Miran and Tahir Masood Khurshid Hadi, Kamal Shoaib), Candyland (Mohammad Ismail, Ziaullah, Zahid Mohiyuddin, Khalid Mohyuddin, Mubashar Puri and Hassan Askari.

From Lahore, the formidable teams are Aces (Izzat Khalil, Nayyer, Usaid, Ghias Shoaib and Jehangir), Lums (Saeed Pirzada, Shahnaz Peerzada, Ahsan, Nauman and Zia, from Islamabad is Tariq Aces (Javed Khalid, Saeed Akhtar, Tariq Aziz, Uziar Kamal, Wajahat Suri, Umar Aslam).

Amongst the ladies, the current national champions REDZ is strong contenders to win the team prize.