LAHORE, April 13: Data Steel team with 137 Victory Points emerged as leaders on the second day of the 11th Balijee International bridge championship at Lahore Gymkhana on Friday.

Prominent players in Data comprising Pervaiz Mirza, Rashidul Ghazi, Hassan Jawad, Tehsin Gheewala had excellent communication, beating Giants 22-8, Bokhari's 22-8.

The setback came their way in their match against defending champions, Formidable who generated sufficiently strong moves to curb Data with 18-12 win. But at the end of the day, the leaders had a seven-point edge over Formidable.

Overnight leaders Dosti had a rather frustrating time in round five against Strikers and in round six against Giants and resultantly had to concede their top slot, and in fact have slipped to 9th place on the leaderboard at the end of 7th session.

Bokhari's and Candyland are joint at third place with aggregate of 127 points, each. In the 5th and 6th rounds, Bokhari’s virtually crushed Lums 22-8 and Strikers 21-9 but had their bad moments against Data Steel, where the latter proved to be successful in dampening the optimism so evident in the Bokharis team.

Candyland after beating Redz team in one-sided match had a rather balanced match against Delhi Bridge Team, as the fortunes had been changing. It was a moment of satisfaction for both teams that they ended up level 15-15.

Results (after seven sessions):

Data Steel 137; Formidable 130; Bokharis 127; Candyland 127; Allana 126; Sherdils 124; Giants 122; Silver Star 118; Dosti 118.