Indian chess grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa and Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar
Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar lauded Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa on January 17 after the Chess prodigy clinched the number one spot among India’s chess players following his victory over World Champion Ding Liren.
Sachin Tendulkar took to his official X (formerly Twitter) account and congratulated Praggnanandhaa for the remarkable triumph. He also sent best wishes for his upcoming fixtures and asked the 18-year-old to bring glory to India in international chess tournaments.
“Big cheers to @rpraggnachess for this remarkable triumph against World Champion, Ding Liren. At the young age of 18, you haven’t just dominated the game but also risen to become India’s top-rated player. Best wishes for your upcoming challenges. Continue to bring glory to India on the international stage in chess,” Sachin Tendulkar wrote on X.
The 18-year-old defeated China’s Liren with the black pieces at the chess-tournament” 2024 Tata Steel Chess Tournament on January 17 and surpassed the legendary Viswanathan Anand to take the number one spot.
Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa said he was surprised with the outcome as he didn’t expect the world champion to get ousted in such a fashion.
“I felt I equalised very easily and then somehow things started to go wrong for him. Even after I won the pawn I felt it should be holdable,” Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa was quoted as saying by Chess.com.
Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, who started playing at the tender age of 5, went on to become India’s youngest and the then world’s second-youngest Grandmaster at age 12 in 2018.
He is the fifth-youngest person ever to achieve the title of Grandmaster after Abhimanyu Mishra, Sergey Karjakin, Gukesh D and Javokhir Sindarov. Incidentally, his elder sister, R Vaishali, is also a Grandmaster, which makes the siblings the world’s first-ever brother-sister GM duo.
(with inputs from ANI)
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