India may find a successor to the five-time World Champion Viswanathan Anand in the new generation of chess players who are just shaping up for the international stage, feels the English Grandmaster Nigel Short.
“There is no doubt that India is a chess powerhouse. There are excellent players in the present generation but I don’t see world beaters who could carry Anand’s achievements forward,” Short, who is the top rated player in the sixth Kolkata Open chess tournament, said on Monday.
“Maybe the new generation, the younger one of the lot, holds hope for India. India needs a player who has that extra in him to match the excellence of Anand,” said Short, who has coached the top Indian players of the present generation like P. Harikrishna and Parimarjan Negi.
Short said the “World Champions’ cap had become too heavy” for Anand to carry and he lost it to a young player like Magnus Carlsen, who is very good in positional play.
“Now that he has lost the crown, he will play more freely and will be getting back to form,” Short said about Anand while referring to his good showing so far in the ongoing World Candidates chess.
The outspoken English GM was vocal in his support of old friend, the legendary Russian World Champion Garry Kasparov, as the favoured candidate for the upcoming election for the FIDE president, which is scheduled in Tromso, Norway in August this year.
“Kasparov is a better candidate who is keen to bring in more transparency in the administration of FIDE and also encourage corporate sponsorship, which is largely missing,” said Short, who had joined Kasparov in creating the parallel Professional Chess Association in 1993.
Kasparov will be contesting against Kirsan Ilymzhinov, who has been the FIDE president since 1995 and the man responsible for the reunification of the two bodies in 2006. “He (Ilymzhinov) is bad since he has failed to bring in corporate sponsorship into the game,” the English GM said.
