‘Father of Indian chess boom’: The Anand effect that’s shaping a ‘golden generation’

PTI, Sep 23, 2024, 12:59 PM IST

Viswanathan Anand (credit: PTI / File)

New Delhi: “If you had to roll the dice, these are pretty good teams to roll them with.” Viswanathan Anand had a strong hunch that India would go on to be more than within “smelling” distance of gold at the Chess Olympiad this time.

And much to the delight of the revered Grandmaster, who played a key role in shaping some of the brightest youngsters in Indian chess right now, the country swept both the men’s and women’s gold at the 45th Olympiad in Budapest, Hungary.

World Championship challenger D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Vidit Gujrathi, and P Harikrishna decimated competition to clinch the gold in the open section, finishing ahead of top seeds USA and Uzbekistan.

Then Harika Dronavalli, R Vaishali, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agrawal, and Tania Sachdev claimed the top honours in the women’s event ahead of Kazakhstan and USA to complete an Indian sweep.

It was a first for the country and it was fitting that Anand, its original superstar of the game, had a role.

Both the teams had fetched bronze medals in the previous Olympiad, which was held on home turf in Chennai. Anand knew they “were smelling the gold” at that time but let it slip in the closing stages.

However, the 54-year-old five-time world champion, in an interview to PTI before the Olympiad, put his faith in both the teams’ ability to go the distance in Budapest and it was icing on the cake that he was there to witness history being made by them in the Hungarian capital.

“…you know, if I had to roll the dice, these are good teams to roll them with,” he had said.

Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Erigaisi and Vaishali have trained at the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA) that the bespectacled chess wizard set up four years ago in Chennai.

The 18-year-old Gukesh and the 19-year-old Praggnanandhaa have often stated that they would not be where they are without “Vishy sir”.

So, it was hardly a surprise that the International Chess Federation (FIDE) addressed him as the “father of Indian chess boom”. This was after the great Garry Kasparov paid tribute to his genius by saying that the “children of Vishy Anand are on the loose!” after Gukesh won the Candidates in April to become the youngest world title challenger.

Anand prefers to share the credit with the parents and formative coaches of the players but does say that his idea of a chess academy, which was inspired by schools he had seen in the Soviet Union more than three decades ago, did play its part.

“The aim was very simply, to help. Indians were consistently getting to the top 200, but not quite in breaking into the top 100 in the same way. So the idea was, you know, can we support the most talented youngsters and see if we can just help them get past that stretch? I think we have been successful now,” he had said before the Olympiad.

“I mean, obviously, there are lots and lots of people involved. Not only, you know, WACA, but also their parents, their own coaches, we try to integrate and make sure that we can fit in nicely. But I think, you know, we definitely played our part.” In his interaction with FIDE during the Olympiad, Anand did admit to being surprised at the pace with which the likes of Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa have risen.

“I took all the youngsters who had become Grandmaster before the age of 14. To be honest, the idea was to support them from being top juniors to becoming world beaters,” he said.

“My initial group was Praggnanandhaa, Gukesh, Arjun joined a bit later. In the girls, Vaishali was there. Did I expect it to go this fast? Not really. Did I suspect this could happen? Yes. But somehow this is unbelievable,” he added.

“This is not a coincidence but at the same time, exceeds my expectations.” The affable, semi-retired player, who still manages to win tournaments for fun, the last being the Leon Masters in Spain a couple of months back is quite content with what he has managed to achieve as a mentor given the challenges that WACA faced before taking off.

The COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak when the academy was founded in 2020.

Anand knew he had a bunch of very special kids putting their faith in him to steer them and he is glad to have been there.

“It feels like a magical time for India. As I said, with such players, you know that you’ll have a certain amount of results, but they consistently exceeded (expectations). It’s very nice to have it all at the same time,” he said grinning widely.