'Father of Indian Chess boom'; The Anand effect that's shaping a 'golden generation'

PTI 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 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 FIDE addressed him as the "father of Indian chess boom".