Recognise chess players: Anand
The first online chess Olympiad that witnessed an anticlimactic finish due to a global internet outage has triggered controversy after India and Russia were declared joint winners. Russian grandmaster Daniil Dubov didn’t mince words when he termed the event a “circus” and said “don’t just call it an Olympiad and it was a failure.”
The controversial ending, however, didn’t stop the Indian team from celebrating their maiden Olympiad gold by organising an online meeting where each member of the side spoke about the memorable day.
During the final, India’s Nihal Sarin and Divya Deshmukh were disconnected from the host server. Viswanathan Anand said the global internet outage wasn’t India’s fault. “We did nothing wrong. We were ready for anything. We were ready to play two games or even six games. Fide looked at the big picture,” Anand said.
There was a hint of disappointment when Anand spoke about the lack of recognition for chess players in the past few years. “There’s been a drop off in the attitude of the Sports Ministry towards chess players. I don’t mean at a personal level obviously. Just that institutionally, we no longer get the awards for international competitions,” said Anand.
The veteran player from Chennai feels the issues in the All India Chess Federation could be a reason for the awards snub. “I think some of it might be due to various issues they have brought up pertaining to the code of conduct and so on. And our federation has had some difficulties. But it would be nice to reset this,” he said.
Anand said the best way to change the scenario is not by writing long letters to the editor but by having good results like the Olympiad success.
“I hope that this result will have a positive impact and that they will look at chess as they did years ago. Several years ago they had recognised this as one of the sports where we do incredibly well... and that we have a good team. And I hope this will have an impact and we will once again start coming in for Arjuna and Dronacharya awards,” he added.
Grandmaster P. Harikrishna said it’s the responsibility of the federation to take up this issue. “It is sad that none of the chess players have won an Arjuna Award or Dronacharya Award for several years. But these are not the reasons why chess players are playing the game. These are however small things that the govt and federation can take up,” he noted.