Mokal siblings achieve new high

To give him company in chess, Prathamesh has a player in younger sister Amruta (11 years) and supportive parents in Sunil and Prachi Mokal.

The Loyola high school, Pashan Road boy has shown tremendous progress and despite the increasing competition has proven himself to be one of the most promising players from the city. He has to his credit an Elo rating of 2195 and has the distinction of being the only player from Maharashtra to be on the Elo list in this age group.

After his recent satisfactory performance of finishing fifth in the under-20 junior national championships at Calicut last year and adding the under-16 State championship title to his already existing list of U-10, 12 and 14 State titles, Prathamesh is now gearing himself up for the higher echelons of the game.

And, therefore, the gift from the Computer Society of India (CSI) could not have come at a better time. A gift of something which he needed the most. CSI, with their noble intents of promoting sports, acknowledged Prathamesh’s talent and have presented him with a computer recently.

And as Prathamesh is known for making the most out of any given opportunity, he will undoubtedly exploit the full potential of this one as well. “This will definitely help me learn the broader aspects of the game, more so since it will provide me a chance to play against the higher rated players of the world available on the web,” says Prathamesh.

For Prathamesh, taking up this sport was a natural outcome of his stubborn nature of wanting to achieve perfection in whatever he does. After suffering the ignominy of loosing in chess most often among his friends, the then five year and eight month old Prathamesh asked his father, himself a sports-person employed with Telco, to enroll him in some chess classes.

Learning at a lightning speed, unusual for one so young, he picked up the basics from Mohan Phadke and displayed his excellence in the game by finishing third in the State level under-8 Sangli tournament. Within a year, he grabbed the joint first position in the U-10 State level meet at Sangli and had a clear victory margin at the U-10 State championships.

Competence, however, was not allowed to give way to complacence and Prathamesh went on working towards improving his game as and when he faced higher rated players. The hard work had its rewards and currently Prathamesh holds the first place, along with Saurab Khedekar (Nagpur), in the junior section of the State. He is at the top of the sub-junior category for the second year in succession.

But ask him about the tournament he cherishes the most, and the answer comes very promptly, “I defeated the junior world No.10 Harikrishna twice — in the U-12 Nationals (Mumbai, May 1995) and again in the U-14 Nationals (Coimbatore, 1997).” In the same championship, Prathamesh also won against Saurab Ganguly to finish third. A remarkable achievement!

Amruta is also catching up with her brother fast, shining alongwith Prathamesh at the junior national in Ahmedabad last month within mere months of joining the coaching classes of International Master Arun Vaiya. Here she earned the distinction of defeating the national and all-England champion Taniya Sachdev for the second time and finished fourth overall.

Inspired by the Kunte siblings — Abhijit and Mrunalini – and also by the Gokhale brothers Jayant and Chandrashekhar, Prathamesh and Amruta have now joined the ranks of the sibling chess players in the country. And having achieved so much in such a short time, their confidence is certainly not misplaced when they say, “We too will earn a name like them!” We too are confident that they will.