Sports
At 16, India’s big chess hope scales first peak, beats his own hero and World No 1 Magnus Carlsen
AS WORLD champion Magnus Carlsen sat bemused, palms on his face, after realising that he was going to lose the eighth round of the Airthings Masters online rapid chess tournament, a wave of shock spread across the face of his would-be slayer R Praggnanandhaa. Wide-eyed and unable to fathom what had unrolled on the other side of the screen in Oslo, he covered his mouth with his hands in the 2 am silence of his home in the Chennai suburb of Padi.
Praggnanandhaa was so exhausted by this difficult game of wit that he just wanted to get some sleep. “I just want to knock on the bed,” he told the chess federation’s website, eyes dazed. Most likely he won’t sleep at all.
That was his “can’t believe it” moment, and that moment has always been part of his wildest dreams. World number one Norwegian Carlsen, the undisputed emperor of chess, a real goat, the marketing face of the game, has always been his idol. “It’s my biggest dream to beat him,” he told this newspaper shortly after becoming the world’s second-youngest grandmaster four years ago. “He (Carlson) has solutions to even the most complex problems,” he explained.
But this time there was no solution, and Praggnanandhaa’s dream finally came true. Being the third Indian to beat Carlsen after Viswanathan Anand and P. Harikrishna underlines his incredible potential. He overturned it in 39 moves and lit up his victory with the black pawn, a clear obstacle in the game.
He was aggressive from the start, putting Carlsen at a disadvantage, but missed a golden opportunity to kill the game in the middle. But he regained his sanity and bounced back, putting relentless pressure on Carlsen, who collapsed and made a mistake.
Perhaps more importantly, India has found Anand’s potential successor and a model for the country’s upcoming chess boom – the Indian Chess League is due to launch in June with prize money of at least Rs 2 crore.
The revival of Praggnanandhaa has also been a timely boost to the game’s popularity in the country. It was also a timely reminder of his talent.
A near-forgotten figure outside the tight-knit chess world, he narrowly lost in the race against time to become the youngest grandmaster in history, and Sergiy Karjakin kept the record before American prodigy Abhimanyu Mishra claimed his this record. The world often forgets that he was a child, not even a teenager, and expectations are often unrealistic.
But the relative anonymity at the time eased the pressure. “Without unnecessary distractions, he was able to fully focus on his game. He wasn’t obsessed with the record, but he was getting a lot of attention. But after that, he was definitely more relaxed and put in a lot of effort. ,” said his father Ramesh Babu.
Complete News Source : The Indian Express
Cricket
KL Rahul dangerously close to Laxman territory; to be perished for Sarfaraz Khan and Shubman Gill
To accommodate both Sarfaraz and Gill and stick with their five-bowler formula, a batter from the Bengaluru Test must make way. Ergo Rahul and the predicted axe
VVS Laxman went through the first half of his illustrious 15-and-a-half-year international career with the proverbial axe hanging over him. Despite his magical stroke-play and a well-founded reputation for rallying the lower order to bat above itself, he was forever the first name that sprang to the decision-makers’ minds when they had to drop someone to accommodate someone else. It wasn’t until the second half of his stint with the national team that he had ‘job security’, which automatically manifested itself in an array of glorious, match-turning knocks and earmarked him as one for a crisis.
KL Rahul is now dangerously close to approaching the Laxman territory, though at least in this instance, a case can be made out, perhaps, for why he often seems to be playing for his place. Almost a decade after his Test debut in Australia in December 2014, he has yet to nail down a permanent spot, a result of glaring inconsistency and repeated dalliances with injuries that have left him with a modest average of 33.87 from 53 Test appearances.
Unlike Laxman, who was thrust to the opener’s position for three years from 1997, successive team managements have worked overtime to create space for Rahul. He started off in the middle order in Melbourne against Australia, opened in the next Test in Sydney when he made a sparkling century, continued in that position for a good nine years – around the large pockets when either injuries or lack of form relegated him to the sidelines – and now seems to have found his calling in the middle order, where he was tried out in an almost last throw of the dice in South Africa last December.
In his limited time at the No. 6 position, Rahul has been a revelation. On a spiteful surface in Centurion in his first innings back in the middle order, the classy right-hander made a marvellous 101 – Virat Kohli’s 38 was the next highest score – in India’s 245 all out. Two Tests later, against England in Hyderabad, he waltzed to 86 of the best until a hamstring strain kept him out of the last four Tests.
On his comeback last month against Bangladesh, Rahul showed why he is rated so highly, and therefore why he so frustrates when he chooses to shackle himself mentally, with uninhibited shot-making when India were pressing for a declaration (Chennai) and looking to make up for lost time with a frenetic batting approach (Kanpur) in the two Tests. Kanpur was especially mesmeric, 68 flowing off his bat in a mere 43 deliveries. It was the best of Rahul.
Axe hangs over Rahul’s head for India vs New Zealand 2nd Test
And yet here we are, two innings later, wondering whether he will, or should, feature in the playing XI in Pune, where India take on New Zealand in a must-win second Test from Thursday.
Shubman Gill, him of three centuries in his last six Tests, missed the Bengaluru defeat to the Kiwis with a stiff neck. Replacement batter Sarfaraz Khan made the most of own good fortune with a delectable 150, which makes it near impossible to drop him now that Gill is fully fit. To accommodate both Sarfaraz and Gill and stick with their five-bowler formula which has worked beautifully in the last few years, a batter from the Bengaluru Test must make way. Ergo Rahul and the predicted axe.
One of the few men to have led India in all three formats internationally, Rahul didn’t help his cause with scores of 0 and 12 at his home ground, the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. In the first innings, he was strangled down leg-side by William O’Rourke while in the second, he received a peach from the same paceman operating with the second new ball and was again caught behind. Rahul was one of 11 failures in India’s first-innings 46 and one of seven wickets to fall in 93 deliveries to the second new cherry, but failures past and the logjam created by Gill’s availability have combined to identify him as the most susceptible to the axe.
It’s a cross impossible to bear, but also impossible to ignore just because it is so heavy, so overarching. Rahul is beyond gifted and makes batting appear oh-so-simple, but his struggles to embrace sustained run-making can’t be wished away. He is the eternal team man, much like his celebrated namesake also from Karnataka – both kept wickets admirably in 50-over World Cups 21 years apart, both made attractive and impactful runs during the tournament and both tasted bitter defeat at the hands of Australia in the final – but ‘eternal team man’ can sometimes be an euphemism for the ‘most dispensable’ and Rahul can be excused for thinking that those two lines have blurred beyond repair. Of course, if he is brutally honest to himself, he will acknowledge at least to himself that he too must bear culpability for the blurring of the lines.
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