Chess Olympiad double gold should propel Mumbai to regain past glory; players need interaction, discussion, analysis which is lifeblood of game
Representational images. Pic/iStock
Every Indian chess player dreamt of winning the team gold medal in the Chess Olympiad some time for the past five decades. It has been a dream of the larger chess fraternity too. The dream has come true, in Budapest (Hungary).
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Viswanath Anand’s world junior win in 1987 was an epic moment. We then had a bronze medal in the men’s Chess Olympiad in 2014 and then 2022. The women’s team won a bronze in 2022. Like they say: Bhagwan jab deta hai toh chappar faad ke deta hai. India got two golds, in the Open Olympiad and the women’s Olympiad. We need to trace the trajectory of the journey and how it led India there. As the saying goes: Rome was not built in a day. Similarly, this empire of Indian chess was not built in one day, one year or even a decade.
Awareness boom
Rewind to the early 1970s, when there was a spike in chess awareness because of the historic Boris Spassky-Bobby Fischer match. This was an exciting break from the familiar USSR Vs USSR World Championship matches. However, in 1970 when it became clear that Bobby Fischer, an American was going to challenge a Russian Boris Spassky, there was obviously a lot of interest in the West, with the Western press amplifying the excitement. The chess world was watching on the edge of their seats.
Desi interest
India too was caught up in the whirlwind. The Indian game of chess was already being played in over 100 countries in those days and the Fischer-Spassky match was keenly watched all over India. The Marathi press was at the forefront fuelling this as there has been a strong chess tradition in Maharashtra.
In the 70s, there was a big boom and almost every youth started following or playing chess. In those days, Mumbai was on a roll, dominating Indian chess. Out of the top 14 national players, there used to be seven-eight from Maharashtra, and at least five-six from Mumbai. Though the performance of the Indian teams in the Olympiad in the 1950s and 1960s wasn’t really inspiring, the dedication of top Indian players was. As a result in the 1970s and ‘80s, Indian players started winning medals in Asian and Commonwealth championships. This gradually improved their results in the Olympiads too.
The first national championship was won by Mumbaikar R B Sapre way back in 1955. In subsequent Olympiads, Shrikrishna Sakhalkar and particularly R B Sapre from Mumbai played a very important role. Indian chess was at an elementary stage with only one International Master and nobody in sight for the title of Grandmaster.
Asian eye
When I got the bronze medal in 1977 at the Asian juniors, India started doing reasonably well. In 1983, the Asian Team Championship was held in Delhi. The Indian team got the bronze medal. I won individual gold on the second board in the Asian Team Championship. China was stronger at that time and it got the gold, while the Philippines got the silver.
In 1985 when I won the Commonwealth championship, it came as a great surprise.
Peak time
In the 1970s it was Mumbai flourishing in chess. There were a lot of important tournaments conducted. As a teenager, I was able to play and get exposure to a tournament which had four national champions playing, including the then-reigning national champion Manuel Aaron. That was a great opportunity as I was only 16 at that time and this was made possible only because it was an open tournament with a good cash prize, which attracted all these big names. When I won this, it became a cherished moment for Mumbai chess. In the ‘80s we (Mumbaikars) had more than one player in the Indian team almost all the time. Maharashtra had won the national championship 11 times, with Mumbai winning it nine times out of these 11. Mumbai had always been a leading chess city till eventually, Chennai overtook us. In the women’s it was absolute domination of Mumbai. The first 20 national championships saw 19 winners from Mumbai. (My wife Bhagyashree was originally from Sangli but had moved to Mumbai in 1983, so she was a Mumbaikar when she won her first national championship in 1984).
The Asian Chess Championship (women’s) was won by Mumbai players from 1978 till 1995. This was a very long reign which eventually the Chinese took over. We had different cities producing great players like Koneru Humpy, S Vijayalakshmi.
Zandu zindabad
When Mumbai chess really flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, it was mainly due to the contribution by Zandu Pharmaceutical Works which offered their canteen for a chess club, free of cost. This was where top Mumbai players congregated to play. The humble canteen was the heartbeat of city chess. The chess discussions were with contemporaries, elderly players and eventually with youngsters. Get the games of the top players in the world, analyse them in depth, discuss them.
This really created a robust chess culture. So seminal was this canteen club on the chess landscape of the city that there was also a saying: ‘One who came to Zandu would always be able to beat those who never visited it’. Then, unfortunately, Zandu sold their company and the chess club stopped. Since then, for the last 25 to 30 years we have no chess-playing club in Mumbai.
Think through
All you can do is approach some players who are willing to train you for high fees. But what’s the use of training without actual practical participation? The most important thing in chess is to think independently. Independent thinking can happen only when there’s a group discussion and not one-sided, monotonous coaching. A champion can be created only when a player develops the ability to think independently.
I remember the days when Ramchandra Sapre-ji and Shrikrishna Sakhalkar-ji invited suggestions of moves from all of us youngsters. When we suggested wrong moves, we were also made fun of but were immediately told why our opinion was wrong. Mumbai’s glory has now passed. After my younger brother Satish became national sub-junior champion in 1976, it took Mumbai 32 years to achieve the same feat when Aditya Udeshi won in 2008.
Similarly, after I became the first Grandmaster in 1997, it took two decades for Mumbai to have the second, Aditya Mittal. We still have only two now.
That is the state of Mumbai chess. We need a transformation. Interactions are the lifeline of the game. We also need to monitor the performance of the children, which means parents not being simply happy about their child doing better than the neighbour’s child but going beyond that, if there is significant improvement in playing strength. As we celebrate a stirring, sterling win, let us move towards Mumbai becoming king and queen of the board again.
The columnist is an Arjuna Awardee, chess Grandmaster and FIDE senior trainer
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