A fabulous fortnight for a special player

By Our Sports Reporter

KOZHIKODE, AUG. 28. The best fortnight yet in Pendyala Harikrishna's life got just better on Monday. Only a few days after becoming a Grandmaster and qualifying for this year's World chess championship, he won the Commonwealth championship in London in great style. All this when he is still in school.

If the 15-year-old Guntur lad is a feeling a bit dizzy now, he cannot be blamed. For all his prodigious talent, he could not have expected success to succeed success so quickly. The great thing about his latest achievement is that he not only won the Commonwealth gold, but also the MSO Masters tourney.

It was the same event, but only players from the Commonwealth were eligible for medals in the Commonwealth championship, meaning that even if he hadn't come first in the tournament, he could have yet won the gold with the best performance among the Commonwealth rivals. Is it a bit perplexing? Well, the Indian prodigy ensured that there was no such confusion at all, by finishing ahead of all the 60-odd contestants, of all ages and nations.

The interesting thing is that he was also eligible for the medals in the under-20 and under-16 boys' sections, but it turned out that he was too good for them! All the medals in different categories of the Commonwealth championship are decided in one tournament, but you are eligible for only one medal.

Admittedly the Commonwealth championship is not the strongest chess tournament in the world, nor is it the most important one, but it is a GM tournament still. But to win it when you are still in school takes rare talent.

That talent was very much on display in Kolkata too earlier this month when Harikrishna finished tenth in a field containing 30 GMs and ensured a berth for the World championship.

But before that, he had played in the Asian junior chess championship in Teheran and had to be content with the silver. ``Yes, I have noticed it myself too that I have not been able to win age-group tournaments,'' he had told this correspondent at that time.

But he shouldn't bother overly about that, when he is scaring the daylights out of grown-up men.

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