The first sight of Vidit Gujrathi gives you an impression of a cherubic, fun-loving kid who has a mischievous look. But in actual life, he is a chess prodigy, who has many firsts attached to his name, biggest being his maiden world U-14 title that he won in Vietnam last year.
For a change, this is cricket’s loss and chess’s gain. The 15-year old International Master, youngest IM from Maharashtra and also the youngest to get one GM norm, tried his hands in cricket too though at a very early age. But to his disappointment, the academy felt that he was too small to join the sport and advised him to enroll for table tennis, badminton or some other games.
This is when father Dr Santosh Gujrathi decided to test his abilities in mind games. “Now I don’t even look at cricket,” says the four-time national sub-junior champion.
Besides the world U-14 crown, the current U-16 national sub-junior champion has won one U-11 and two U-13 national titles. To add further glitter to his collections, three silver medals at Asian Championships in 2005, 2006 and 2008 speak about the Nashik boy’s calibre.
On Wednesday, Vidit took 29 moves to register his first win at the National Premier Chess Championship beating Matta Vinay Kumar at the Goregaon Sports Club. After drawing with Babu Sudhakar on Tuesday, Vidit’s win added a point to the existing half, which he secured on Tuesday.
Vidit landed in the city just a couple of days before the tournament as he was in St Petersburg, Russia, participating in the Chigorin Memorial tournament. “It was mighty tough tournament, some 40-50 GMs were taking part,” said Vidit, who faced seven GMs in nine rounds.
Top Results: IM H Sharma drew with GM A Gupta, GM A Prasad bt IM Sethuraman SP, IM Thejkumar MS drew with GM A Kunte, N Das lost to GM S Kidambi, IM M Krishnan lost to IM S Jha, GM GN Gopal bt A Mhamal, GM P Thipsay lost to R Sangma, MV Kumar lost to IM VS Gujrathi, P Somak bt WIM P Rout, IM N Srinath bt IM R Balasubramaniam
Comments