On Monday morning, India woke up to what will go down as a seminal moment in its sporting history. Dommaraju Gukesh, the teen chess prodigy from Chennai, triumphed at the Candidates Chess tournament in Toronto to earn the right to challenge China's Ding Liren for the World Championship later this year. At 17 years, 10 months and 24 days, Gukesh is the youngest to achieve the feat by some distance.
The next youngest was Garry Kasparov, who was nearly four years older when he won the Candidates tournament in 1983-84. The Russian chess great captured Gukesh's victory best when he described it as "the Indian earthquake in Toronto." He went on to add that this was a tectonic shift in the chess world.
What Kasparov meant was that Asia has decisively changed the chess world order by ensuring that for the first time in the history of the game, two Asians would be battling it out for the world title. Not just for the men's crown but for the women's as well, after Chinese Tan Zhongyi won the Candidates to challenge the defending world champion and compatriot Ju Wenjun. Of course, in the men’s tournament, Magnus Carlsen's decision to vacate the title last year after winning it for five years in a row opened up the space for others but in no way diminishes the importance of the title.