January 5, 2018 by admin

‘Madras Tiger hamesha zinda rahega’

Chennai, Six-time world champion Viswanathan Anand today expressed interest to be part of the Indian team for the Chess Olympiad to be held in Georgia later this year.
The Chennai Grandmaster, who has not played in the sport’s premier team event for a while now, could add strength to the national squad with his presence.
Anand recently won the World Rapid Chess Championship in Riyadh and clinched the bronze in the Blitz event. Today, at a felicitation, India Chess Federation presented him a cheque of Rs 5 lakh and Tamil Nadu State Chess Association gave him a specially designed silver cascade.
India’s first International Master and nine-time national champion Manuel Aaron said it was nice to see Anand doing well again, adding that the ‘Madras Tiger hamesha zinda rahega’, alluding to his continuing success.
Anand said he had missed out the feeling of people calling him the world champion for a few years. His performance in the last two years on a few occasions has been ‘wobbly’, with good and bad results, he said. “It has been a struggle. Part of it was getting used to all the new talents that are coming up and the way the chess world is changing. The last two rapid events that I played in did not go so well. I was looking forward to a podium finish, but this (winning the gold) was unexpected,” Anand said. “I have always genuinely enjoyed the reception I get as the world champion. A world title is always special. It does one thing that doesn’t happen with any other tournament. Your name gets changed suddenly.”
Anand picked D Harika, Nihal Sarin, R Praggnanandhaa, P Iniyan, S P Sethuraman, Vidit Gujrathi and B Adibhan to watch out for in future.