Harikrishna - India's youngest GM

By Our Sports Reporter

KOZHIKODE, AUG. 26. The question always was only when. But when Pendyala Harikrishna became India's youngest Grandmaster at 15, on August 15, no one was aware of the feat.

Two days after the Independence Day, he was in fact distraught when he missed the 11-game norm by a whisker as the Asian chess championship concluded in Kolkata. Not even the fact he had qualified for the World championship as the youngest Indian ever wasn't much of a consolation for him. ``I am very disappointed,'' he had said.

Little did he know that he had completed his norm requirements at the end of the ninth round itself, because the first norm he made, at the Olympiad in Istanbul last November, is considered a round robin norm. That means he needed his norms to cover only 24 games, and not 30 (when there isn't a round robin norm). The other requirement, an Elo rating of 2500, he achieved a year ago.

This correspondent had brought to the attention of FIDE vice president Mr. P.T. Ummer Koya the issue of the Olympiad norm, and now it is learnt that Harikrishna's GM title has been confirmed. ``He will be awarded the title at the FIDE Assembly to be held in Greece next month,'' he told The Hindu.

The shy prodigy from Guntur has broken World champion Viswanathan Anand's record, which stood for 14 years. Significantly he has bettered the record by three years (Anand had become India's first GM at 18 in 1987).

Last year he had erased another record of the genial genius from Chennai when he became India's youngest International Master. The way he completed his norm was amazing, as he scored all his three norms in back-to-back tournaments. Moreover, looking at the kind of chess he was playing at the time, you did not have to be a wizard to conclude that it was only a matter of time before the boy turned a Grandmaster.

Harikrishna first made news when he won the World under-10 championship in Menorca, Spain, in 1996, for that was the first World title for an Indian chess player after Anand emerged as the World junior champion in 1987. A generous sponsorship from Wipro helps him to play in tournaments abroad and to engage a coach like Evgeny Vladimirov, a former trainer of Kasparov.

Harikrishna is currently playing in the Commonwealth chess championship in London, seeking what he thought - before he reached England - his final norm. He was told by the tournament's director, Mr. Stewart Reuben, that he was eligible for the GM title when the latter came to know of his Olympiad norm.

``It's a fantastic achievement,'' said Krishnan Sasikiran, the 19-year-old Chennai-based GM. ``But we were all expecting this.''

``It's a just reward for his amazing talent and hard work,'' said S. Vijayalakshimi, India's first Woman Grandmaster. ``I haven't seen such a natural flair for the game in any other youngster.''

A superstar in world chess is in the making.

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