Once played by Vallabhbhai Patel, bridge seeks India's 'chess' moment: 17-yo Anshul leads its revival
Seventeen-year-old Anshul Bhatt is leading a revival of bridge in India, a game once popular among historical figures like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. With encouragement from chess legend Viswanathan Anand, the bridge community hopes to replicate the success of India's chess boom.
Why it matters
Illustrates the cultural shift in competitive mind sports and the potential for niche games to gain mainstream popularity through youth engagement.
NEW DELHI: As a young barrister in Ahmedabad, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel spent his evenings at the Gujarat Club, where he would play bridge and smoke cigars, and it was there that he first heard about a man named Gandhi returning from South Africa, dismissing him as a "crank" at the time. It wasn't until Gandhi successfully organised the Champaran Satyagraha in 1917 that Patel took him seriously, abandoned his European suits and card games, including bridge, and joined the freedom struggle. It's a detail very few know about a game very few in India play these days, at least not the way they used to.Bridge is a mind sport, just like chess. Both are built on incomplete information deduced from what an opponent, or in bridge's case, a partner, chooses to reveal.
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