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Amazing triumph
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The remarkable talent of 13-year-old Dasari Sai Srinivas came to the fore when he won the individual gold on the top board in the World Youth Chess Olympiad (under-16) in Turkey recently, writes V.V. SUBRAHMANYAM.
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RETURN OF THE KING: Dasari Sai Srinivas with father Durga Prasad and coach M. Srinivasa Rao.
WELL, THE amazing success story of gifted youngsters from the Krishna-Guntur belt in Andhra continues to stun the chess experts across the nation. The latest to join the select band is 13-year-old Dasari Sai Srinivas, who is back after winning the individual gold on the top board in the World Youth Chess Olympiad (under-16) in Turkey a couple of days ago. A brilliant achievement considering the fact that the only other medal for India came from Abhijeet Gupta (silver) while the national team finished with a bronze. What can make the critics stand up and take note is the impressive show of Srinivas. It is not a sudden development.
The emergence of the class VIII student of Krishnaveni Talent School in Vijayawada is a tribute to the efficacy of the well-established pattern of former and current national players taking up full-time coaching spending more than eight hours a day and in the process earning a decent livelihood for themselves.
A feature which is most welcome from the parents' point of view as they are assured of their children being at home, pursuing studies and also doing well in the world of chess. Coming to the World Youth Olympiad, Sai Srinivas says he was confident of winning the gold from the start of the event.
It may sound as over-confidence but the plain fact that he translated his abundance of talent into performance should merit greater recognition. He played five rounds, winning four and settling for a draw against a Hungarian player. He rates the win against Turkey's Canemre in Sicilian Opening as the most satisfying one.
For, he came up with the right combination of moves which saw the opponent slip into a situation where he was forced to make positional blunders from which he never really recovered. For someone who has World Cup champion and India's best known face in the world of chess as his favourite, Sai Srinivas religiously follows all the games of the leading lights in contemporary chess on the internet and tries to analyse the complications with his personal coach M. Srinivasa Rao.
The coach himself qualified for the prestigious National `A' to be held next January in Mumbai to become the first Andhra player after P.D.S. Girinath achieved that feat six years ago (if one excludes the GMs Harikrishna and Humpy for they get direct entry).
Srinivasa says that his trainee is basically an attacking player and hates to waste time in gaining control over the 64-squares.
And, more importantly, Srinivas has a good grip in positional play. "Very rarely, he is seen losing a piece for nothing,'' the coach added.
That Srinivas is good with white and black colours with a fancy for Sicilian and the Ruy Lopez Openings can stand him in good stead is evident by his gradual manner in which he is climbing the ladder in the competitive world of chess. Ever since, he won the first national title (under-9), coincidentally the same year when Dronavalli Harika (another star who is already making waves in women's world chess), in 2000, Srinivas won silvers in the last year's Asian under-12 championship and this year's Commonwealth Championship. Perhaps, the right hints this dynamic youngster is throwing up to the concerned.
Interestingly, Srinivas took to chess in 1996, inspired by Pentyala Harikrishna's feat of winning the world under-10 title the same year.
He casually asked his father, D. Prasad (a railway employee), why not teach him the game. The rest is now acknowledged to leading to the emergence of a promising career. What separates him from the rest of the crowd is while others are content in dreaming, this unassuming boy is keen to realise it complimenting with the required hard work, determination and dedication.
And, like any emerging talent in the State, Sai Srinivas, too, is looking for a decent sponsorship in the next two years which his father feels can be crucial in shaping up the boy's career.
Apparently, he needs financial support to achieve his first goal — to become the International Master. And improve his current ELO 2250. On his own, Srinivas does feel that he has to focus on mastering the nuances of the Openings and the middle-games.
For this, he needs the moral and financial support of the powers-that-be if he has to reach anywhere the standards of Harikrishna and Humpy. The opening game in real life has been pretty good, but this young boy is looking for a more comfortable middle game to deliver the goods.
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