Officers\\\' Club and the game of bridge

Usually, I write an article on the occasion of the Officers' Club Open Bridge Tournament highlighting the virtues of the game of contract bridge and pay tributes to its inventor, William Venderbilt and its exponents who made the game popular throughout the world through teachings, writing bridge columns and a countless number of books.

Personally, I played bridge for 57 years and, out of my 38-year membership of this club, I rendered my time and energy in the promotion of the game of contract bridge for 33 years. I pulled myself off from associating from all events of bridge tournaments since early this year. In my reckoning, members of young generation have attained the art of events management inter alia tournaments on contract bridge.

The founding fathers of the club were certainly wise enough to locate a nice sight to establish the club in 1967. Then the facilities were limited but the club provided scope of being used as the second home to the members and a place of good pastime.

Among the limited scopes, members had enjoyed the privilege of playing tennis, badminton, billiard and the other versions of card games, e.g. Hydrogen, Katchu etc. With the passage of time, activities were enhanced; a huge building known as Khelagar was built with a small annexe to accommodate holding of Housie game, a swimming pool with modern amenities, a health complex and a squash court.

And then the subsequent Executive Committees built a 4-storied building and housed two modern halls, a cafeteria, a spacious Housie Hall, a health corner, a large library, a bridge room, two rooms for other versions of card games, an enlarged billiard room, facilities to hold club meetings; besides providing accommodation of club's top officials and a prayer room. The building is fully air-conditioned. Thus the recent Executive Committees took up several projects and implemented the same aimed at innovation and providing a new lustre to the club. With all these privileges it would seem desirable to maintain the original club building as truly a "heritage building".

I consider it as my bounden duty to write on introduction of the game of bridge in this club. As everybody knows, from its inception, this is known as a "dry club" and on my return from London, I found the club "dry" in respect of the game of bridge too. As an avid bridge player, I made concerted efforts to attract attention of the successive Executive Committees to include "bridge" in the hub of club's activities. I found them cooperative and generous in this respect. And by the end of the late 70's of the last century, bridge found a berth. Indeed, several senior members joined the bridge table and at times, as many as 4 tables were available to play bridge. I personally sponsored a couple of bridge knowing officers as members of the club. Then, by the end of 1983 I again left for London. On my return from London, I was back to Officers' Club to play bridge and got amazed; there was no bridge table and the name plate of "bridge room" itself disappeared. At that juncture, the Executive Committee asked me to organize bridge game once more and ordered the Manager, on the spot, to fix up tables and provide bridge gadgets. Thus from early 1990's of the last century we had seen the rebirth of the game of bridge. But by then number of bridge players depleted; and could hardly form two bridge tables --- subsequently reduced to one table albeit dying a natural death of this intellectual game in this prestigious club.

To attract members to play bridge, I organised a "Pair Bridge Tournament" on the last Friday of each month on self-financing basis. The successive Executive Committees were generous to allow the old housie room free of fees. The competition continued for almost 10 years; and gradually, participation of players dwindled. By mid-2000, finally it came to a grinding halt. I had observed that members of the club in particular and bridge playing people at large, were averse to participating in this "Pair" event, in preference to Hydrogen, Katchu and Game. And yet, I was determined to give a push to popularise the game of bridge and broached an idea to hold an annual "open bridge tournament". The successive Executive Committees of the club were pleased to extend all-out cooperation including full financial support. Eventually, my efforts for a couple of years, were crowned with success and the "Officers’ Club Open Bridge Tournament" launched its journey in 2007 with a "Running Trophy" and lucrative prizes. I shall pin hope that this prestigious tournament will continue to be held in the years to come, under the able leadership of a team of members of this club.

I played the game of bridge as my favourite pastime - in England, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, USA and of course, my home country; Bangladesh. In bidding, I always followed sine qua non, required of a bridge player. When I played bridge in the company of players; learner to one STAR level, very often than not, I did jitter. So, here and there, specific details slipped through, and when they did, they were surprising.

I conclude the article by paying homage to:-

(a) Omar Al Sheriff who died on July 10, 2015. He was a popular actor of Egypt. Lawrence of Arabia-famed Sheriff excelled equally well in Dr Zivago and established himself in the film world in Hollywood. Besides being a world famed film actor, he was an astute bridge player too and a prolific column writer on bridge. During my days in London, I used to read his columns regularly.

(b) Kazi Abdul Halim who was a veteran bridge player and later, as a Director, conducted a large number of bridge tournaments. He died in October, 2015. He was a WBF trained Director. As a founder member of the Bangladesh Bridge Federation (BBF) and its longest serving Treasurer, I have fond memories of late Kazi Halim.

The writer is Member, Card Sub-committee, Officers' Club, Dhaka. He can be reached at [email protected]