Looking forward to world meet: Surya
KOLKATA: After a largely self-imposed exile, Grandmaster (GM) Surya Shekhar Ganguly will return to the India team next month at the World Team Championship in Astana, Kazakhstan. To say that he is looking forward to it would be understating the obvious.
India will be represented by GMs Krishnan Sasikiran, Aravindh Chithambaram, Baskaran Adhiban, SP Sethuraman and Ganguly.
But before that Ganguly will play the Aeroflot Open in Moscow beginning on Tuesday.
“I had issues with how the India team was chosen because it was mandatory to play the national championship to be eligible. It was only from the time of the last Olympiad that ratings became the only criterion which is how it should always have been,” said Ganguly, a six-time India champion, in an interview here on Saturday.
India got a wild card to the world team event, said Ganguly. The top four teams from the Olympiad — India, with GM Viswanathan Anand in the fray, finished sixth — and continental champions get automatic entries in this 10-team all-play-all competition. “Looking forward to a string of tough games against Russia, China among others,” said Ganguly. The last time India played this event was in 2010. Ganguly won an individual gold and the team bronze. Ganguly turns 36 on February 24. Asked how difficult it is to keep up in a sport that keeps getting younger, he said: “When I beat a GM in 1995 and I was 11, it wowed the world of chess. Now, we are getting GMs around that age, so, yes, it does get more challenging for us.
“But you can’t substitute experience. Even recently, remember the world champion in rapid chess was Anand (2017). There are some moves he will play intuitively and that can come over through experience.”
And to keep up with the young ones, whose fitness levels, he said, was excellent, Ganguly said he is learning badminton and table tennis.