INDIA VS CHINA IN BATTLEGROUND CHESS

INDIA VS CHINA IN BATTLEGROUND CHESS

In 1972 Bobby Fischer of the US challenged Boris Spassky of the USSR and came up trumps at that to seize the world chess crown. In 2024 it is Gukesh Dommaraju of India measuring up to Ding Liren of China for the same crown. Then the Cold War was at its height and the World Chess Championship took on a definite political turn. Add to that Fischer's idiosyncrasies, his histrionics, all bordering on virtual emotional blackmail of FIDE and enormous nerve pressure for the defending champion Spassky to bear, which the Russian with great dignity and sporting spirit bore while Fischer mounted on him his boorishness and undeniable chess genius, and you have your 'picture perfect' of what this sensational sporting event of the century became.

To start with, Fischer swamped off all Candidates' opponents in a manner unheard of. He won 19 games in a row to eventually come up against Spassky. Then he ran into dispute with FIDE over match venue, match payment and refused to play unless the winner's fee was doubled to 250,000 US dollars. 

Spassky arrived on time at Reykjavik, Iceland, the venue for the match, but there was no sign of Fischer. Finally, the US Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, intervened and requested Fischer to play whereupon a British businessman promised to pay the balance amount that Fischer demanded, and Fischer arrived for the match on the very day of the scheduled first game. He was driven from the airport straight to the venue and began late. Strangely, he made a mistake in the middle game which only bare novices make, losing his bishop to a 'poisoned pawn'. Spassky went up 1-0. Now Fischer had problems with journalists clicking photographs too close to the playing board and upsetting his concentration with their clicking sound. In protest he did not play the next game and went down 0-2.

Fischer now demanded that the organisers should remove journalists covering the match from the playing hall which they for commercial considerations refused to accede to. Fischer in response threatened to fly back home. When the match was about to be aborted and awarded to Spassky, the generous Russian agreed to Fischer's demand to play in a backroom where he could avoid journalistic intrusion completely. All these histrionics of Fischer, the tension thereof and the pressures of his own communist country which was at war with America now over the chess board, upset the World Champion's composure and he started losing the match.

Fischer deliberately arrived ten minutes late for the third game but won it comfortably. Thereafter he steamrolled over the Russian and it was all over after the 21st game with the American creating history with a scoreline of 12.5--8.5 in his favour. America had her first World Champion. The chess war had been won. Bobby Fischer was now the undisputed monarch of the chess world. The Soviets had been dethroned after decades.

We are now faced with a similar contest somewhat between representatives of enemy nations, India and China, who after the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 have had a series of border skirmishes as China aggressively pursues her hegemonistic agenda in South Asia and surreptiously pushes her frontiers into legitimate Indian terrain to then claim it as their own. 

India's Gukesh Dommaraju, only 18 years and 6 months, and in the form of his life, faces reigning World Champion Ding Liren of China who is running the worst patch of his Grandmaster career. It is a prestige contest between antithetical neighbours and Ding in consequence is under tremendous pressure from his communist country's enormous expectations of him while the Indian teenager bubbling with youthful energy and enthusiasm and in prime touch threatens to wrest the world crown from his Chinese counterpart. Experts including Magnus Carlsen are all of the opinion that Gukesh will crush Ding, but then, who knows? 

Let us then wait and see what chances. Will Indian deliver the coup de grace this time on China? Only time will tell. Till then good luck to both, to Gukesh who is our own lad and to Ding who is a supreme gentleman. And victory to chess which originated in India and then made its wanderjahre across the world!

Written by Sugata Bose