The Indian men's and women's chess teams won silver medals at the Asian Games in Hangzhou on Saturday after posting easy wins in the ninth and final round. (Medal Tally | Full Coverage)
The top-seeded men, boasting of a strong all-Grandmaster line-up, including teenage stars D Gukesh, the Indian No.1, and R Praggnanandhaa, finished behind Iran. Ind🥃ia finished on 15 match points (2 for a win, 1 for a draw), one behind the gold medallists Iran.
Two draws -- one against Iran and the other against China -- proved to be the undoingꦯ for the Indian men and ultima✨tely saw them finish behind the gold medal-winning Iran.
In the ninth and fin🌌al round, India beat the Philippines 3.5-0.5 but it was not enough as Iran rꦅouted South Korea 4-0 to finish on top.
Vidit Gujrathi, Arjun Erigaisi and P Harikrishna defeated their respe꧒cti𓄧ve opponents while Praggnanandhaa was held to a draw by Paulo Bersamina.
In the women's section, GM D Harika, IM R Vaishali, IM Vantika Agrawal and WGM B Savitha Shri won their ga🦋mes easily to set up a 4-0 win over South Korea to finish with 15 match points.
A defeat to China in the fourth round hurt the team's chances as they ༒fell behind and could not recover from that✱ point.
The top-seed⛎ed Chinese team won its last-round match against the UAE with a 4-0 margin to take the gold with 17 maꦫtch points.
The Indian men finished their campaign with a 3.5-0.🦄5 win against the Philippineওs.
Speaking about the team's performance, Praggnanandhaa said, "It went well overall. We have finished with a silver (medal). It could have gone better but considering everything, I think silver is not a bad result. Our opponents w🐓ere quite good, they were all quite strong teams and we felt we played well but on💛e or two games didn't quite go our way."
Asked if the formidable Indian team had under performed, given that in many matches th꧂ey out-rated their opponents on every board, the 18-year-old GM said, "It's still tough to acꩲtually win those games. Between opponents rated 2620 or something and over 2700, there's not a huge amount of difference."
About the increased expectations after reaching the ෴Chess World Cup final earlier this year, he said he did not feel that right now.
"I don't really feel that righ🍸🔜t now. Maybe in the future but for now, I'm just enjoying the game and playing well."
Gujrathi, on his part, said, "I'm glad we won a silver medal. Especially because ch൩ess is generally not in the Asian Games, andꦆ it's happening after 13 years, and we've been able to bring a medal home to our country. So I'm very proud of that."
Coach N Srinath said he was plea🏅sed the team was able to win a silver medal but felt "we could have done a bit better."
"It's mixed feelings. On the one hand, it's qu🥀ite pleasing to win a silver medal, which was not at all easy. I thought (many of) the teams were quite underrated actually. For instance, we have the Olympiad champions 🎐Uzbekistan who couldn't win this tournament, and finished with the bronze medal."
He felt Gukesh's loss to Parham Maghsoudloo in the match aga💛inst Iran was the one that made the difference.
"I think there were two matches which were quite close. The first one was the match against Ira🌳n itself. We we🅰re 2-1 up towards the end. And there was this endgame between Parham against Gukesh, which was really close to a draw. But Gukesh was under pressure for most of that game and it's understandable that Parham scored on that one.
"And then the n🍨ext game against China, where Gukesh was completely better. It was a massive advantage right after the opening an𝕴d if we had scored that one, I think we would have got the gold. So we had these chances, but it just didn't fall our way. These little things took the gold away from us," he added.
The fancied Indians (Vidit Gujrathi and Arjun Erigaisi among the men and K Humpy and D Harika in the wo♑men's event) failed to win a medal in the individual event.
