Heir India: No Pretenders to the King's Throne

Viswanathan Anand - India's undisputed Chess King

When Magnus Carlsen played his last move in the final game of the World Chess Championships, it not only ended Viswananthan Anand’s six-year hegemony on the world title, but also burst the balloon that chess fans in the country had existed in for more than two decades.
It brought about a sudden realisation that the man who had become synonymous with Indian chess was in the twilight of his career and raised a very disturbing question – what next?The answer is even more disconcerting. As Anand prepares for what are likely the final few moves of his illustrious career, there is no visible successor to replace him at the top.
The second best Indian player Pentala Harikrishna is ranked 42nd in the world while Parimarjan Negi is next at 77th. Neither looks like qualifying for even a Candidates Tournament any time soon.Harikrishna started off like Anand, becoming the world junior champion in 2004, but has since been unable to keep pace with his compatriot. Hari is 27, an age by which Anand had already taken on (and lost against) Garry Kasparov atop the World Trade Centre for the classical title.
But GM RB Ramesh feels such a comparison is unfair. “Anand belonged to a different era. When he was making his way to the top, he had to get past only a few players. If Hari had started out then, he would have been in the top ten as well. You can’t compare different eras. Rating wise, Hari is currently stronger than Alexander Alekhine. If he had played back then he would have been world champion.”
But Ramesh also concedes that both Hari and Negi have not been able to keep up with some other players of their generation. “It is not about quality. Indian players struggle with their ratings because they hardly get to play in closed tournaments. If you play in closed tournaments, you only play against opponents who are either as good as, or better than you are, rating wise. But in open tournaments, you can come up against a lot of lower ranked players. It is like a college student taking their eight standard exams over and over again. It is pointless. If you look at players like Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana, they only play in closed tournaments. But Harikrishna only gets to play in open tournaments, which hardly helps with his ratings.”
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The gulf between the resources available to Indian and Western-based players is evident in the case of Negi. In 2006, Negi became the world’s second youngest Grandmaster at 13, surpassing the record set by Carlsen. An year later, Caruana, a few months older than Negi, achieved his final GM norm. Within the next two years, Caruana had played in a number of closed tournaments and had taken on some of the top players in the world including Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Vassily Ivanchuk, Levon Aronian and Anatoly Karpov. Now Caruana is seventh in the world. Negi, who once had the faster rising graph, is 70 places behind.
“It took time for me to adjust to the limelight. I was not ready to cope with the demands of playing at that level. I did stagnate for a couple of years. Like Carlsen, I became a Grandmaster at 13, but I have not been able to improve at the pace he has done. But that being said, players in India are not getting the same opportunities as those elsewhere. Me or Hari would have got more opportunities to play against the top level players, had we been in Europe or the US. Even Anand moved to Spain,” says Negi.
He feels that chess authorities would do well to organise a few world class tournaments. “The top tournaments there are invitational. And we don’t get many invites to play in these. Playing in India, you don’t get the same level of opposition. You have Hari, myself, Sasikiran and a couple of others, so it is a very select group. If the sponsors were to come forward and commit to tournaments involving top stars, then that would be good not just for me or Hari, but for the younger players who would get the opportunity to test themselves against some very good players.”
As far as who the next Indian to challenge for a world championship, Negi says it is hard to tell who that man will be or when it will happen. “As of now, none of us are close to reaching that level and for me, personally, there is a long way to go. But hopefully in the future I’ll make it.”
But All India Chess Federation secretary DV Sundar maintains that bringing top players here is unrealistic given the lack of sponsors for the game in the country. “Such tournaments require a lot of money but unfortunately we do not have sponsors who will pump in that kind of funds into chess. So it is difficult to host such kind of tournaments here. But we host 7-8 tournaments every year and the players should focus on that.”