Gukesh Dommaraju moved his rook, his bishop, his rook again, his bishop again… game 14 of the chess World Championship, though a winner-take-all affair, was — to most observers — going nowhere. The computers gave it a 98% chance of being a draw. The elite players watching were already discussing what would happen in tiebreakers. On the other side of the board world champion Ding Liren was going through the motions too, bishop here, rook there, over and over
For some reason, Gukesh kept at it, and kept at it, and kept at it, till Ding slipped. And that was all the chance Gukesh needed. As he had for the 9 games that had been draws, Gukesh simply didn’t give up in trying to force a result by means unorthodox and irregular — and it paid off in the end, on the day it mattered most.
Belief. It’s the one quality that describes Gukesh — and with him, elite Indian sport — the best. Coming from a country where sport is often seen as a means to an end at best, or an aimless waste of time at worst, Indian athletes over the years have become the champions they are simply by dint of not giving up that self-belief. Not when the odds seem impossible, not even when the world considered victory a far-fetched prospect.
When Neeraj Chopra walked into the Tokyo National Stadium, just how many really thought he would end the night with gold around his neck? It made little sense, there was just no historical precedent to it — Indians simply don’t do track and field medals. Yet he made history with a display of supreme confidence.
When Vinesh Phogat faced off against Yui Susaki — who had an 86-0 record in senior wrestling — in Paris 2024, she was doing it on the back of the toughest year any Indian athlete has ever faced, in a weight category completely new to her, and most were already penciling her in for the repechage rounds. That was simply the logical thing to do. Not for Vinesh; 2-0 down with a few seconds to go, she took Susaki by surprise with a lunge and pinned her down. Game over.
Or take Rishabh Pant in Brisbane 2021. At tea on Day 5, India were 183/3; they needed 145 runs to win, Australia needed seven wickets. This the Gabba, or the Gabbatoir, where Australia were historically at their most dominant. Everything suggested India would try and play out the overs. Not Rishabh Pant. Hitting T20 shots in Test match cricket against a rampant Australian attack in hostile conditions, he upended all calculations, defied all conventions and within a couple of hours India had the match and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in their hands.
Until a bespectacled man from Chennai came along, no non-white man had ever become champion of the chess world. Viswanathan Anand took on the might of Russia, still fresh from the Soviet era, armed with two boxes of floppy disks and a ‘laptop computer’ and became world champion. And then he repeated the trick four times and then became godfather to a generation that knows no fear.
Precedent. Logic. Observed knowledge. Accepted wisdom. That’s for ordinary folk; these sporting champions smash aside the odds, do the seemingly impossible.
No 18-year-old had ever been at the stage this 18-year-old was at, forgetting winning it all. No one had done it before, so Gukesh Dommaraju decided to become the first. Aged 11, he proclaimed he wanted to become the youngest world champion. Aged 18, he did it.
It wasn’t just the fact that he did it, but the way he did it. Winning the Candidates when he was, at best, an outside bet. Drawing level in game 3 after losing game 1. Recovering from a stunning loss in game 12 to almost win game 13, and then win game 14, and the title. “I was inspired by my opponent,” he would say about those losses. Not intimidated. Inspired. In none of these 14 games did he walk in thinking, ‘hey, a draw is a decent result here’ or ‘hey, I’m so young and it’s such an achievement to just be here,’ and his play on the board reflected just that.
The noise coming in from outside — about the quality of chess being played in Singapore — is immaterial, really. A world champion is a world champion. So, what if a mistake decided this Championship in the end? This is elite sport, where the margins are fine, and victories are claimed by those who pounce on errors small and big. ‘What if Ding had not blundered?’, you ask? Well, what if Sir Viv Richards had timed that pull in 1983 as he almost always does? What if Misbah-ul-Haq had scooped that innocuous ball in 2007 to anywhere but short fine leg? What if big Johannes Vetter, the overwhelming favourite for Olympic Gold in Tokyo, had hit 90+ for the eighth time on that balmy night in 2021? What ifs are for the theorists. For everyone else, champion is champion.
Which is also why it also doesn’t really matter if many feel Gukesh isn’t the best player in the world. Objectively, subjectively, figuratively, by Gukesh’s own admission, it may be Magnus Carlsen, but he was not seated across the board in that world championship match. He wasn’t there. He isn’t champion anymore. End of. It’s who wears the crown in the now that matters. The end of chess? Please. It’s just the beginning of a new era… and atop that world is sat an 18-year-old kid from India. The possibilities it heralds for Indian sport is endless.
