NEW DELHI: “Don’t blame me for keeping the board order in suspense. I had it on chess-results right from September 1.” The message, though posted with a playful emoji from Srinath Narayanan’s own social media handle the moment India’s board order for the 46th Chess Olympiad became public, was the first sign of how closely one particular decision was being watched.In the weeks before the team left for Samarkand, no topic dominated chess circles more than the absence of world champion Dommaraju Gukesh from the top three boards.Olympiad boards are assigned by strength, and as reigning world champion, Gukesh had always been the default choice for Board 1, exactly where he sat during India’s gold-clinching Budapest campaign in 2024.But this time, a run of poor results had dropped his rating to the point where he was, remarkably, only the second-lowest-rated player in India’s own squad, ahead of Vidit Gujrathi. When the board order finally went public, Gukesh was at four.Earlier this week. India came home with silver, one place below the gold they’d earned two years earlier.Sitting down with TimesofIndia.com after the tournament, captain and coach Srinath Narayanan walked through the decision that defined the build-up, the flashpoints that decided the campaign, and why he isn’t interested in calling this a missed gold.
How Gukesh’s board four was secured
The decision itself, Narayanan acknowledged, was never made lightly.“It was a difficult decision. I thought about it for a really long time. I consulted a few people, like Pentala Harikrishna (India’s 6th Grandmaster), who I look up to, and also my assistant coaches,” he recalled. “I spoke to all the different players, and I also deliberated over it for a few weeks before arriving at a final decision.”The clearest signal came from an unlikely source, the Chennai Grand Masters tournament earlier in the year.“That was where Arjun (Erigaisi), Nihal (Sarin), and Gukesh all were playing (in that tournament),” Narayanan explained. “Arjun completely belonged there and was fighting for first place. Nihal also showed pretty good chess.”Gukesh, by contrast, struggled, finishing last on his home soil.“The Chennai field was pretty strong, similar to what you’d face on board two, not quite board one, everyone around 2700. It was a high-pressure board, and whilst Gukesh showed some signs of playing really good chess, overall he had a very difficult time. I was hoping that would be the tournament where Gukesh gets his form back, because Chennai was what helped him get to the Candidates in 2024. But it was not to be,” he added.
Explaining the scenario further, the Grandmaster compared the process to physical rehabilitation. “When someone is going through a bad form like this, they are mentally recuperating, almost like how you come back from a physical injury. You can’t immediately start physically exerting yourself with the most challenging physical tasks; you have to build towards it. Similarly, mentally, Gukesh had to build towards that.“In Samarkand, Gukesh went on to play ten games, drawing two and winning seven before going on to lose the final round game against Hungary’s Gleb Dudin.
Looking ahead to Sindarov
With Gukesh due to defend his world title against challenger Javokhir Sindarov later this year, the Olympiad’s biggest subplot was always going to be what it meant for that match.Despite the loss in the final round, Gukesh won the silver medal on Board 4. Narayanan sees it as reason for optimism.“I think Gukesh is in a much better mental space after the Olympiad, because it was probably his first really good tournament in a long time,” Narayanan added.“It will be close, not as one-sided as what the ratings reflect. Javokhir enters with a lot of confidence, and that can change if there’s an early good result for Gukesh. He’s also showing an incredible amount of opening preparation against other opponents, but in a (World Championship) match, this gets neutralised.“Both players see everything the other has. There are factors going Javokhir’s way right now, but they can even out over a match. I think it’s going to be a very close, very interesting one.”
Life inside the camp
When the conversation turns from Gukesh to the silver-winning campaign, there was the simple question of what the weeks in Samarkand actually felt like from the inside.“The experience was great. Just being part of such a unit, we feel quite privileged,” Narayanan said with a smile. “Every player is a lot of fun, and everyone genuinely cares so much about each other. This is a team which we have had for a lot of members since 2022. There is a lot of trust and mutual belief in each other.”Describing how hectic the schedule was, Narayanan continued, “There was a lot more game time and preparation time involved. We played for around five hours every day, and prepared for close to four hours.“But in the free time that we got, we played outdoor sports like padel. There is a padel court within the hotel complex, which was very convenient. We also went for team walks together.”
The board-to-board picture
Praggnanandhaa, who stepped up to lead the team on Board 1 and won an individual bronze, drew more praise from his captain than his scoresheet alone suggested.“His score (6.5/10) still didn’t completely reflect the level at which he played. He created chances in almost every game, quite a few draws which could have been wins. But the quality of his play was really high. It never looked like Pragg was in danger of losing. Even the couple of times he fought into slightly worse positions, body-language-wise, he was the one pushing. His opponents were the ones who were a bit stressed,” the Indian coach remaked.Erigaisi’s tournament was really two tournaments in one. He (5.5/10) started off with a loss and ended being the saviour for the Indian team.“The first two rounds were quite unsteady for him. If we take those out, both his results and his play were at a pretty high level,” Srinath told this website.“There were a few simple conversions, like against Uzbekistan B, where if he had won, his score would have been much better. Against Germany, he was the one pushing, trying very hard, but couldn’t quite get the win. So it was frustrating in terms of results, but in terms of the quality of his play, he showed he belongs at the highest level.”
Nihal Sarin’s tournament carried the most consequence for the team’s overall trajectory, for better and worse.His round-two win against Indonesia, Narayanan pointed out, was what put India on a collision course with Uzbekistan in the first place.“We got to play Uzbekistan in round six because of Nihal’s win in round two against Indonesia. He was the sole winner,” the Chennai-based grandmaster added.That same player was then at the centre of the tournament’s most painful moment.
The challenges and how the team got through them
The real test arrived in round six, when Nihal blundered his queen in a winning position against Nodirbek Yakubboev, a loss Narayanan doesn’t shy away from calling decisive.“That game decided both the match and the tournament. It was probably like the final before the finals, because it was pretty clear it was going to be either Uzbekistan or India. Uzbekistan had the momentum on their side. A win against them would have changed it completely,” Srinath said bluntly.What got the team through it, he said, was routine rather than any grand intervention.“It really helped to have a united team spirit, supporting each other. Everyone was there for Nihal that day. It also helped to have a rest day on the very next day, we could recuperate together, spend some time playing different games, and playing something outdoor really helped.”
Those rituals, Narayanan explained, predate this tournament entirely as he continued, “We had a team walk ritual and a team eating ritual that we do no matter what, and a man-of-the-match ritual during team meetings. All these we established in the 2024 Olympiad. Having these routines helps face both the positives and negatives, because it brings us all together, and someone can really help someone going through a tough time. The next day, Nihal had a good sleep, because there was no game.”Two more moments stayed with the captain.“The eighth-round draw of Gukesh against Mahammad Muradli. He (Gukesh) had a very big advantage (against Azerbaijan), and Uzbekistan had lost their match. We saw a window of opportunity, and Gukesh missing that win felt very painful,” Srinath recalled.And then the final round. “It was clear within the first 90 minutes that Gukesh’s position was bad. The only other board where we could strike was Arjun’s, but Gukesh’s had a more winning position than Arjun’s, in my opinion. So that was also pivotal.”Every success story possesses challenges. And thus, Narayanan won’t let those moments define the story.“In hindsight, even if both results had gone our way, it’s unlikely it would have changed the standings, we’d have tied with Uzbekistan and had a worse tiebreak,” he told TimesofIndia.com.
Silver won, or gold missed?
It’s the question that will follow this campaign around, and Narayanan has clearly thought about his answer.“It’s really important to realise that we have won silver rather than missing gold, because it’s unrealistic to win gold every single time. There is no rational reason to have that kind of expectation. There are other teams who are incredibly strong, investing and practising the same way as us. Between these teams, it’s roughly 50-50. Uzbekistan is one such team, who have invested heavily, and their players are top professionals, motivated, and the same age group as us,” Srinath added.“We didn’t come to this Olympiad in the best of form. Our players were probably at their peak around 2023-24, a period where we had four players in the quarter-finals of the World Cup, won one Grand Swiss, and had three of those players in the Candidates. We were clearly playing the best chess during that period.“Considering we were not in the best of our forms and still won silver shows how much depth and skill we have that at our best, we are going to win gold, by a big margin. But even when we are not at our best, we can still win silver. That shows how good the team is.”
