A very significant move

THIS WAS a boost he badly needed. Pendyala Harikrishna, India's youngest International Master, now can set his eyes firmly on becoming the country's youngest Grandmaster.

He doesn't have to worry about the financial aspects of playing in GM tournaments; they will be taken care of by the Bangalore- based IT giant Wipro, which recently announced a three year sponsorship programme for the prodigy.

Wipro's generous package, which will bear all of the Andhra lad's expenses towards travel to international tournaments, entry fees, services of coaches and chess software, is just what Harikrishna needs.

This is also great news for Indian chess, and a just recognition for the rapid strides India has made in the sport over the last few years. Wipro would also be sponsoring the World under-18 champion Aarthie Ramaswamy from Chennai.

If there was one thing Indian chess lacked, it was the support of corporate houses. Last year the senior National women's chess championship had to be conducted without any sponsorship, in spite of the fact that the standard of the women's game in the country is not bad.

There is no dearth of talent in the country - the World's second best player is an Indian, the country has produced four World champions in the last four years in age group competitions, the Indian kids nearly had a clean-sweep in the recent Asian children's championship at Teheran, the National championship is soon set to become a Grandmasters tournament, there are many promising kids around the country - and the game is well served by a vibrant organisation.

It is indeed heartening to note that the big corporates are finally coming out to lend a helping hand to chess.

``But this is only a beginning,'' says AICF secretary P.T. Ummer Koya. ``The AICF has been working hard for the past few years to attract big corporate houses to chess. We are expecting more sponsorships in the future.''

During the World junior chess championship held here in 1998, one had met many players from different parts of the globe. What was surprising was that most of the players' trips were sponsored by corporates in their respective countries. They said young chess players received generous support from big companies.

In India such financial support has been rare. Now that Wipro has made a very significant move, one hopes that more corporates would enter the scene.

Wipro could not have indeed chosen a more deserving player than Harikrishna. For the past one year he has been playing incredible chess. He made his three IM norms in three back-to-back open GM tournaments within a space of just two months (some players take years to complete their title).

The norms came from the Asian individual championship at Udaipur in January, the Goodricke International GM tournament at Calcutta in February and the Commonwealth championship at Sangli last month. In each of the tournament, he accounted for highly rated Grandmasters.

One was a witness to Harikrishna's graduation to the senior ranks. It happened at the Susheela Devi Thipsay Memorial FIDE rating tournament held here along with the National women's `A' championship last July.

Harikrishna would often be spotted looking at the women's boards, after making short work of his opponents.

He won the FIDE tournament, in which three IMs played, scoring 8.5 points out of nine points, a stupendous performance from a 13-year-old without even a single IM norm.

He had beaten all the three IMs - R.B. Ramesh, K. Murugan and P. Mithrakanth - and could have even finished with a Fischer-like score of 9/9, as he had a chance to press for a win against local player K. Ratnakaran before he played it safe for a draw.

Then he played in the National `B' championship at Mumbai and finished sixth with a commendable score of 9.5/13 to qualify for the National `A'.

He shot into fame in 1996 when he won the World under-10 championship in Menorca, Spain (it was the first World title for an Indian after the World No. 2 GM Viswanathan Anand had won the World junior championship in 1987).

After being taught the moves by his grandfather T. Ranga Rao, he had won his first National title at Palakkad in 1993 (the under-8 championship).

Nobody doubted Harikrishna's talent; but the question was whether he would live up to the great expectations.

The fact is that in the last ten months he has gone beyond expectations. GM Dibyendu Barua says he was stunned by the amount of progress Harikrishna made in one year. V.R. Bobba, who coached him first, says even he did not expect this kind of improvement.

Both Barua and Bobba had said that he could become Grandmaster within one year. But when asked when he expected to get his GM title, he had said, ``Perhaps three years.''

At that time, Wipro hadn't told him that it would be sponsoring him. Now that he could play in the closed GM tournaments in Europe, it would be safer to bet on the prediction of Bobba and Barua than on Harikrishna's own.

P. K. AJITH KUMAR

Kozhikode

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