Grandmaster Divya Deshmukh with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during an interaction with the 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad 2024 winners, at his residence in New Delhi on Wednesday, September 25, 2024.
| Photo Credit: ANI
India is celebrating the country’s historic twin gold at Budapest, and the World champions had a meeting with the Prime Minister in New Delhi on Wednesday. But, not many know how difficult the families of some bright young stars are finding to support their career.
International chess is expensive. You have to play abroad regularly and coaches are very costly (the best of them charge something like ₹7,000 per hour).
Not all the big names have big sponsorship deals
Divya Deshmukh was the rock of the Indian women’s team at the Chess Olympiad. She played all the 11 rounds, won eight of them and drew three. She won the individual gold, on the third board, in addition to India’s historic team gold.
She is ranked No. 15th in the world among women and should be moving up when the next FIDE rating list comes out next week. Back in June, she won the World junior championship at Ahmedabad. She is the World No. 1 in the junior girls’ ranking list. Last year she won the Tata Steel Chess India blitz title after beginning her campaign as the tenth seed in a field of ten.
And she is only 18. She is indeed the most promising player in women’s chess in India at the moment.
Divya’s father, a Nagpur-based doctor, once told this correspondent, smiling, “I am her sponsor.”
Some of India’s biggest prodigies have long-term sponsorships though — like R. Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi and Nihal Sarin.
But there are several young Indian players who could do much better with such substantial support. Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay believes S.L. Narayanan would have done much better than his current world ranking of 98 if he had a good sponsor at the right time.
Talent should not suffer because of the lack of support.
Published – September 25, 2024 08:55 pm IST
