Teloijian Tea Co comprising Sudhir Kumar Ganguly, Prakash Kejriwal, Kamal Roy, Pritish Kushari, Debashish Roy, Arbind Roy, eighth overnight, played consistently to finish third after 12 rounds, a performance rendered more creditable in the absence of star Jaggy Shivdasani.

But it was Trimbhak Rubber who stole the limelight today. Placed hopelessly at 79 victory points overnight, not a soul expected them to make the cut. But steady breaks of 20, 20, 14, 20 helped them jump into the reckoning.

In the crucial eleventh round, they met league leaders and favourites India Blues.

The result was stunning: Trimbhak (Hari Shankar Bajoria, JP Ghosh, S Salia, S Basak, A Bramhachari, S Majumdar) won 25-4! They were well into the top 8.

The stunning defeat threw an unnecessary scare into India Blues' calculations.They had plodded steadily from their overnight second position to hold a sound lead of 15 VPs after Round 9. Though India Blues' (Ashok Ruia, JM Shah, Jitu Solani, Kamal Mukherjee, K Venkatraman, Ashok Goel) qualification was a foregone conclusion, Jitu Solani exaggerated their woes by saying, ``Our players are sleeping out there! We are really on the gas.'' Captain Ashok Ruia was characteristically self-critical. ``I played badly,'' he said and chose to sit the twelfth round out.

Blues notched a resounding 25 VPs in the final round to finish first with 213 points. Overnight leaders Jimmy Mehta (Jimmy Mehta, Sharad Mhatre, Amod Rele, Balu Ukidave, Ajit Chakradeo, A Bapat) almost did not make it. Three poor rounds of 10, 12 and 5 saw them placed miserably after Round 9.

A bidding mishap in the open room saw Jimmy Mehta close five clubs; seven spades would have been the ideal auction on the club guess. In the closed room, Khandelwal bid six spades and gathered 15 IMPs (international match points).

But,like yesterday, Jimmy Mehta waged a comeback with rounds of 17, 21 and 17.

Other teams to make the cut were Khandelwal (AV Gokhale, KVK Murthy, S Vaidya, A Vaidya, R Khandelwal), Dr Tolani (Dr NP Tolani, Dr S Roy, Archie Sequeira, Ian Concessio, IC Alphonso), Pankaj Kapadia (Pankaj Kapadia, Nitin Shah, Pankaj Desai, Sunit Choksi, Dr Prakash Paranjpe, Vivek Bhand) and ITC (Kalpana Mishra, Anand Mehta, B Das, K Sarkar, Anil Padhye). National champions Indian Railways, a depleted team, and national runner-up Formidables failed to qualify, finishing joint ninth with 179.