Wanted: Sponsors for chess

But AICF secretary P T Ummer Koya is confident that the country is well on the path to glory. ‘‘We have been achieving results that we have been setting for ourselves. This meet proves that we are capable of taking on the world in this game, but the major deterrent is sponsorship,’’ he claims.

Curiously, the meet in Kochi did not have a title sponsor. The Union and State Government grants were the main source of revenue for conducting the event, but even these funds were not landing in time, lament the organisers.

Despite the hazards, the winning performances keep the talented children hooked to chess. Like Kruttika Nadig of Pune, who moved to Bangalore as her mother shifted her job as a principal of a school to a big software company. ‘‘I put her in chess as she was a restless child and I thought chess would make her quiet,’’ explains Kruttika’s mother Devika Nadig. Kruttika did not become quiet, but instead took the game seriously. Today, the mother has to shell out at least Rs 2 to 3 lakh every year to keep her interest alive. Nadig finished fourth in the World junior girls in Kochi, by far her career-best performance.

Tania Sachdev, who lives in New Delhi, is in a similar boat, but her mother Anju says the game is getting more popular in the capital and good performances were enough to attract sponsorship. ‘‘But compared to the needs of a professional chess player, this is not enough,’’ adds Anju.

The main drain for the parents is the coaching fee. ‘‘A Grandmaster from Mumbai charges Rs 10,000 for a week for Kruttika; and if it is a foreign GM, the fee for the same period is Rs 50,000,’’ explains Devika Nadig.