Sport - Chess   

Indian team arrives

By Manuel Aaron

Eraklio (Greece) Nov.14 A strong Indian team arrived on Wednesday night at Eraklio on schedule, a day ahead of the official arriving day for the World Youth Chess Festival which incorporates the World Under-10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 boys and girls chess championships.

However, India's Grandmaster entry in this championship, Pentyala Harikrishna who is playing in the U-18 category was scheduled to arrive later as also Vishal Sareen the girls' coach of the Indian team.

The World Youth Chess Festival is being held at the Creta Maris Hotel here from Nov. 14 to Nov.24. The first round will be held on Nov. 15. Apart from the normal entitlement of 10 entries, India has an additional five seeds thanks to victories in the Asian Championships and Dronavalli Harika's silver medal finish in the World U-12 girls last year.

In the last edition of this event, Harika was the only player to win a medal, a silver at the U-12 girls. But earlier, in 1999 we were the best performing country with two golds (Aarthie Ramaswamy and Deep Sengupta) and one silver (Harika).

The total number of Indian players here is 28 and the number of accompanying persons including the coaches Manuel Aaron and Vishal Sareen is an equal number of 28.

The total number of participants in the festival is yet to be finalised, said Woman Grandmast Elizabeta Polihroniade of Romania who has traditionally been the Arbiter for all World Under-10 Championships. But she said the expected number is 900, a big leap of nearly 100 over last year at Oropesa.

India's brightest hopes depend on Wipro sponsored Harika, Harikrishna and Deepan Chakravarthy. But the other players can really spring surprises and take the medals away from better known names.

Actually, Harikrishna could find the going really tough as there would be many aspirants from Europe who would be gunning for him.

The site of the tournament is really beautiful. It is on the southern most edge of Greece and not far from the northern most part of Africa.

The team:

U-10 Boys: P.Negi (Asian U-10 Champion), Y.Sandeep.

U-10 Girls: P.Lakshmi Sahithi (Asian U-10 Champion), Manogna Mandava. U-12 : D.Harika (Asian U-12 Champ and World U-12 silver medallist of 2001), I.Ramya Krishna.

U-12 Boys: Subodh Lakhey. U-14: Nikhilesh Kumar (Asian U-14 Champ), G.Rohit.;

U-14 Girls: Saheli Nath.U-16 Boys: Somak Palit; U-16 Girls: Amruta Mokal; U-18 Boys: P.Harikrishna (Asian U-18 Champion), S.Poobesh Anand; U-18 Girls: P.Priya;

Special entrants here from India:

U-10 Boys: Sankalp Modwal, P.P.Prachura. U-10 Girls: Gundala Madanasri; U-12 Boys: C.R.G.Krishna, D.Sai Srinivas, Aswin Jayaram; U-12 Girls: Kajri Choksi; U-14 Boys: Namra Haren Pandya, Deep Sengupta; U-14 Girls: Krutiga Nadig; U-16 Boys: Deepan Chakravarthy;

U-16 Girls:Tania Sachdev, Eesha Karavade;

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