Reward the Olympiad gold winning chess team: Chess Players Forum

Chennai, Sep 13: With several days being passed and there has been no news about rewarding the Indian chess team that won the FIDE Online Olympiad gold recently, the Chess Players Forum has appealed to the central government to do the needful.

In a letter to the Union Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Kiren Rijiju on Saturday, the Chess Players Forum pointed out the continued under-recognition of achievement of chess players and appealed to reward the victorious Indian chess team members.

“India capturing the top spot at the Online Chess Olympiad is one of the greatest achievements in the history of our sport, ‘reward for the players’ dedication and hardwork.

The Indian Men had achieved a Bronze medal in Chess Olympiad 2014, and the current achievement ranks even higher than that performance,” the Forum said.

“At such a juncture, we wish to bring to your attention the general under-recognition of achievements of chess players in years gone by. Even during the recent Sports Awards and title citations conferred by the government of India, Chess is continued to be overlooked. We wish to bring to your kind notice several achievements by chess players in the past two decades, including World Championships in different categories,” the letter notes.

The Olympiad team was comprised of five times World Champion Viswanathan Anand, Vidit Gujrathi (Captain), Pentala Harikrishna, Aravindh Chithambaram.Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin, Koneru Humpy, Harika Dronavalli, Bhakti Kulkarni, Vantika Agrawal, R.Vaishali and Divya Deshmukh, with Srinath Narayanan as the non-playing Vice Captain.

The Forum pointed out that, “the noble intellectual game of Chaturanga (Chess) is India’s greatest legacy to the world.”

(IANS)