- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
WITH eight months to go for the Asian Games 2022 to kick off in Hangzhou, China, the All India Chess Federation (AICF) is hopeful that India will return with a rich medal haul in both the men’s and women’s categories. And to give the dream a wing, legendary grandmaster Viswanathan Anand is set to mentor the players.
Chess is set to return to Asian Games after 12 years.
“Eyeing the four gold medals at stake in the games, legendary Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand took a different role and will mentor the team and first session with him and players will kick start next Thursday,” an official release said.
Aiming to make a big difference after 2010 Guangzhou Games, where India only got two bronze medals, the AICF started the preparations in advance by selecting 10 probables each for the men’s and women’s teams.
The team has been selected on the basis of their international rating. Vidit Gujarathi, P Harikrishna, Nihal Sarin, S L Narayanan, K Sasikiran, B Adhiban, Karthikeyan Murali, Arjun Erigaisi, Abhijeet Gupta and Surya Shekhar Ganguly made the cut in the men’s team while the women’s team will be selected from K Humpy, D Harika, Vaishali R, Tania Sachdev, Bhakti Kulkarni, Vantika Agrawal, Mary Ann Gomes, Soumya Swaminathan and Eesha Karavade.
The selection committee featuring Abhijit Kunte, Dibeyandu Barua and Dinesh Sharma will decide the final list of five players in April.
The chess event at the Games will begin on September 11 and will be played in two formats.
The individual events of men and women will be played in rapid time control from September 11-14 while four Board five-member Team Event will be played under standard time control from September 16-24.
