Atreyo Mukhopadhyay
Asked what she wants to do after achieving her best performance till date at a senior, individual event, the first thing Divya Deshmukh said was she wanted to doze off. “I just want to have some sleep and food,” the first Indian to reach the Women’s Chess World Cup final told the official broadcaster in Batumi in Georgia. The drama on the board hardly let anybody sleep though.
Divya looked like winning a few times against China’s Tan Zongyi, a former world champion who lost this year’s World Championship bout against compatriot Ju Wenjun. Divya kept missing the final trick and her opponent also erred towards the end, which prompted to Indian to say she got “lucky”. She shouldn’t mind this slice of ‘luck’ after all, because it comes with several perks.
The reigning world junior girls’ (U-20) champion grabbed the first of the three Candidates berths the World Cup offers and also collected her first Grandmaster norm. Her opponent in the final will be the winner of the tie-breaker between Koneru Humpy and Lei Tingjie. The Indian world No. 5 and the Chinese world No. 3 drew both games.
After Humpy’s entry into the World Championship final in 2011, this is the biggest individual achievement for India in women’s chess. Divya’s bull run in the country with one of the richest traditions in chess reminds one of R Praggnanandhaa in 2023. The current world No. 4 was a promising 18-year-old then and announced his arrival at the elite level by reaching the World Cup final in the open section, where he lost to Magnus Carlsen in tie-breaker.
What Divya is doing is significant because of different reasons. The Chinese are the undisputed leaders in women’s chess. They have won the World Championship nine times — the most for any country — and kept the title since 2016. The top three in the world are from China. They dominate women’s chess like their compatriots did in badminton and table tennis.
By defeating Tan, the world No. 9 who won the world title in 2017, Divya has challenged the world order. Before stunning her semi-final opponent with white pieces in the second game, the world No. 18 had knocked out No. 6 Zhu Jiner in the pre-quarters. Still to turn 20, the girl from Nagpur has dented the reputation of the superpower, much like PV Sindhu, who played a part in ending the Chinese hegemony in women’s badminton.
The biggest pillar of the Indian women’s team’s historic gold medal win at the Olympiad and an individual gold winner on the third board, Divya was making steady progress in women’s rankings. There was a third-place finish in the Pune leg of the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix, but nothing spectacular. Now, she has made heads turn.
Nothing enhances reputation like knocking out big names from top events. Having done that, Divya is one step away from history. And she will have an extra day of rest because on Thursday (July 24) the tie-breaker between Humpy and Lei takes place. After a break on Friday, the two-legged final will commence on Saturday (July 26). A recharged and replenished Divya will be tough to crack.
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