A big win for Indian chess

Viswanathan Anand triggered the original chess revolution in India in 1987, becoming the country’s first Grandmaster when not yet 18. Such was the impact of the supremely gifted teenager from Chennai that his exploits inspired a generation of prodigies to dream and achieve big. Anand’s sustained excellence on the world stage kept the fire burning and gradually, India began to stockpile Grandmasters, both men and women, with stunning regularity. He walked alongside the likes of Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, and did so without exhibiting any traits of eccentricity that by then had come to characterise chess geniuses.

While chess didn’t necessarily graduate into a popular spectator sport, it did grow in stature as a mass playing attraction. Admittedly, a majority of those inspired by Anand’s early success came from Tamil Nadu; soon, the net spread to other pockets of the country and India’s standing in the world of chess rose exponentially in the 1990s and beyond, peaking when Anand was crowned the FIDE World Champion for the first time in 2000. Even as the numbers playing the game, and doing so successfully, continued to grow, the financial rewards weren’t always commensurate with the tools required for preparation and continued progress, and administrative misadventures abounded. Factionalism within the sport’s governing body in the country attracted inevitable scrutiny and sanction, and while that didn’t result in players dropping standards, chess no longer enjoyed the patronage of officialdom.

Against this backdrop, India’s remarkable gold-medal march at the recently concluded virtual Chess Olympiad has come as a shot in the arm for the sport. A strong collective fashioned this triumph, showing the depth of Indian chess talent, but aptly with Anand’s presence and mentorship guiding the team. Joint winners alongside traditional powerhouse Russia, India can use this extraordinary story as the springboard to greater glory. Equally, the chess fraternity can now expect that government apathy will become a thing of the past. Anand was the recipient of the inaugural Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, the country’s highest sporting honour, in 1991-92. But as he presciently pointed out in the immediacy of the Oympiad victory, it’s been eons since recognition has been conferred on chess players/and or coaches at the Annual Sports Awards. That must be a particularly bitter pill to swallow, given how freely these awards are handed out, and not always to the most deserving. It can only be hoped that through this effort, chess will regain the attention from officialdom that it so richly deserves. This could well set off another era of triumphs in the game of 64 squares for India.