How India dropped the baton

India finished a best-ever sixth at the recent Chess Olympiad in Mallorca and, while it would be easy to pin it all on Viswanathan Anand14...

India finished a best-ever sixth at the recent Chess Olympiad in Mallorca and, while it would be easy to pin it all on Viswanathan Anand8217;s presence, Surya Shekhar Ganguly8217;s sequence of wins helped the cause a great deal.

8216;8216;Anand was the best8217;8217;, said Ganguly, adding, 8216;8216;after him it was me8217;8217;.

The team of Anand, Krishnan Sasikiran, Pentala Harikrishna, Abhijit Kunte, Sandipan Chanda and Ganguly returned to India on Monday, having squandered a strong position 8212; from where they could have finished in the top three 8212; to a not-so-impressive sixth.

8216;8216;I can give you reasons for our deterioration as the meet progressed, but that won8217;t help,8217;8217; Ganguly told The Indian Express. 8216;8216;What I can tell you is that we are really disappointed. We were in the medal range and should have held on.8217;8217;

What did go wrong? 8216;8216;We won our first tie against Uruguay 2.5-1.5. We should have won that 4-0, but we8217;d travelled 40 hours, missed a flight and then reached Mallorca the night before the morning game. Some of our planning wasn8217;t right, we made a couple of bad selection choices. And then we had slipped too far below.8217;8217;

The loss to Russia was the first major jolt, followed by a humiliating defeat to Cuba. Was it over-confidence? 8216;8216;In a sense. Anand had decided to sit out because he wanted to play the last four rounds on the trot. I had to rest because I had just played a four-hour game against Russia.8217;8217;

nbsp;	8216;Anand led the way8217;

		nbsp;	8226; This was Viswanathan Anand8217;s first Chess Olympiad in 12 years so what was it like for the others? 8216;8216;Just his presence was a huge motivation8217;8217;, says Ganguly. Anand8217;s contribution didn8217;t end with just guiding his juniors. According to Ganguly, Anand took the initiative 8212; aided by his knowledge of the lanes and bylanes around Spain, where he lives 8212; to chalk out the team8217;s dinner plans: 8216;8216;After play, Anand would take all of us to some restaurant or the other. He had an itinerary planned, and we had a great time every evening because of him.8217;8217;	nbsp;

Ganguly is equally voluble discussing his own form. 8216;8216;I might even have made an individual medal, but that didn8217;t happen. Sasi and others were ranked higher than me, but I think after Anand I was the best. We had decided that I would play with white as often as possible, because I am a lot better with whites than blacks. I played great all through, especially in the win against Holland8217;s Erik van der Doel.8221;

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The other Indian to play most of his games with white 8212; Sasikiran 8212; didn8217;t have as good a time of it, and Ganguly doesn8217;t hesitate in saying that Sasi was 8216;8216;out of form8217;8217;. 8216;8216;He was on a higher board than me, so some of his opponents were tougher than mine. But he was out of form and couldn8217;t win. So the pressure on me to win was greater. I won often, though, which was good.8217;8217;

For the moment, Ganguly wants to rest. 8216;8216;The Olympiad is very tiring. 14 games in 14 days. I need to take a bit of time off.8217;8217; And then, it will be back to the grind, and plotting his move towards 2600 ELO points he is currently on 2559.