Dommaraju Gukesh, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Rameshbabu Vaishali and men's team captain Srinath Narayanan landed Chennai on Tuesday morning.
'Anybody who has seen a photo of Anand playing will see an Indian flag beside him. And, when he wins, the national anthem is played. What more proof do you need about Anand's nationality?'
From Joe Root vs Jasprit Bumrah's high-stakes chess match to the all-round brilliance of Ben Stokes vs Ravindra Jadeja, and from emerging face-offs like Shubman Gill vs Shoaib Bashir to K L Rahul's test against Chris Woakes, each duel carries weight far beyond statistics.
Ding will face a stern challenge from the 18-year-old Gukesh, who "doesn't make any mistakes at all" and has had a terrific run in 2024.
Defending champion Viswanathan Anand will start his campaign with black pieces against Magnus Carlsen of Norway in the first game of the 12-round World Chess Championship in Chennai on Saturday. After declaring the 'FIDE World Championship Match-2013' open, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa picked the photograph of Anand from the first bowl and a 'black piece' from the other during the draw of lots for the match, to be held at Hyatt Regency hotel.
Over the past few months, the overall interest in chess is reported to have doubled, with more players than ever coming together to participate in chess events that are being increasingly held through online platforms
'The Indian earthquake in Toronto is the culmination of the shifting tectonic plates in the chess world.'
World champion D Gukesh played out a draw with Jorden van Foreest of Holland, while Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa beat Alexey Sarana of Serbia as the two Indians shared the lead after a thrilling day at the Tata Steel Masters at Wijk Aan Zee (The Netherlands) on Saturday.
Gukesh follows in the footsteps of Anand, the only other Indian to win the Candidates
With Carlsen ahead 3.5-2.5 and six games to come, Anand will have to chalk out a plan to neutralise the Norwegian's big advantage in very quick time.
'Today, let us reaffirm our commitment to strive to realise Gandhiji's dreams. His watchwords, truth and nonviolence, will continue to remain relevant for the whole world. He also taught us that rights and duties are but the two sides of the coin - indeed, the true source of rights is duty. Today we recall his lessons in compassion too - compassion not only for our human neighbours but also for our other neighbours, namely, flora and fauna, rivers and mountains.'
Anindya Dutta relies on facts and figures rather than back stories to trace the history of Indian spin bowling, says Partha Basu.
Hundreds of students from the Velammal Vidyalaya, the school where Gukesh studies, lined up at the airport at least one hour before his flight landed to greet the 17-year-old chess prodigy.
Seventh-round loss gave me energy, motivation to aim for title: Gukesh
Indian freestyle wrestlers claim Asian team title in U-17 category
The iconic Times Square in New York City, reverberating with the chants of 'Vande Mataram' and 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', was on Sunday drenched in hues of saffron, white and green as the biggest Indian tricolour was unfurled at the popular destination to mark the 75th anniversary of India's Independence Day.
IM Elisabeth Paehtz of Germany and GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan won the girls' and boys' title respectively at the World Junior Chess.
The conclusive champion of this tournament is set to be determined on Thursday.
Indian chess wizard Viswanathan Anand faces a stern test in defending his world title against a young Magnus Carlsen as one of the most awaited World Chess Championship matches in the recent history of the game begins in Chennai from Saturday.
Woman Grandmaster Bhakti Kulkarni and Grandmaster S P Sethuraman made history, winning the gold medal in the Asian Continental Women's and Open chess championship that concluded in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on Friday.
Pragg, Gujrathi out of contention
The year 2023 will go down as extremely memorable for the Indian sports fraternity as players across various disciplines came together to script history at the Asian Games held in Hangzhou.
'Goa is a tiny state, but in terms of its Business of Politics, several powerful lobbies of India are involved in it, be it the mining lobby, hoteliers' lobby, casino lobby, hawala lobby, drugs lobby etc.'
With 29 gold, 31 silver and 51 bronze in their kitty, the Indian para athletes won four medals more than the record tally of 107 won by the able-bodied athletes in the Hangzhou Asian Games, held from September 23 to October 8.
This is the full text of the address to the nation by President Droupadi Murmu on the eve of India's 78th Independence Day.
Grandmaster and Commonwealth champion Abhijeet Gupta created history at the Hoogeveen International chess tournament by becoming the first player ever to win the title twice in a row in the FIDE Open that concluded in the Dutch hamlet.
A contingent of 215 athletes will represent India in 141 events across 19 sporting disciplines.
Viswanathan Anand and Koneru Humpy catapulted Indian chess to new heights while Parimarjan Negi also made his presence felt in the year gone by.
Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand drew with old foe Vladimir Kramnik of Russia in the fourth round of Shamkir Chess 2015, held in the memory of Grandmaster Vugar Gashimov.
The gold medal fetched by rifle shooter Abhinav Bindra in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the country's first-ever individual yellow metal in the Games long history, has been chosen by All Sports magazine as the greatest Indian sporting achievement of all time.
Mishra spent several months in Budapest, Hungary playing back-to-back tournaments, chasing the title and the record. He scored both his first and second GM norms there, at the April Vezerkepzo tournament and the May 2021 First Saturday tournament, both round-robins of 10 players specially set up for scoring norms.
Led by Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra, India will seek to showcase its ascendency as a sporting power at the Asian Games, which opens formally on Saturday after an unprecedented one-year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Summary of sports events and persons who made news on Monday
The 12-year-old drew with GM Yuriy Kuzubov of Ukraine in the ninth and penultimate round of the Masters section in the Hastings International Chess Congress.
"The crucial moment was the win against Magnus Carlsen, because he had come back after a defeat against Bu Xiangzhi. He seemed to be in great form, as always.
''Chadwick Boseman didn't get sympathy votes because he is dead.' 'He would have won even if he were alive.' 'What a contrast to our nation where you are instantly anointed to greatness if you are dead and your abysmally mediocre posthumous film gets designated as a classic,' sighs Subhash K Jha.
Sanjay Kapoor elected AICF President, Chauhan retains secretary's post.
Indian chess ace Viswanathan Anand will find himself in the unfamiliar position of starting as the lowest-ranked player when he takes on a tough field in his first Classical tournament since losing the world title, in the Zurich Challenge in Zurich at the Savoy.
Mamallapuram's Group of Monuments -- a collection of 7th- and 8th-century religious structures -- attracted 46 per cent of the total foreign tourists who visited India compared to 12 per cent by the Taj.
Two Indian-Americans -- Sriram J Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe -- have scripted history by becoming co-champions of the prestigious Scripps National Spelling Bee, the first since 1962.
