The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Tamil Nadu `A' in lead

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Sunday, Jun 06, 2004

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Sport - Chess

Tamil Nadu `A' in lead

By Rakesh Rao

PUNE, JUNE 5. With the bigger teams struggling to strike big, Tamil Nadu `A' sneaked into the lead after an eventful fourth round of the IOC-KPIT Cummins National team chess championship at the Manohar Mangal Karyalaya hall here on Saturday.

Fourth seed Tamil Nadu, aiming to gain maximum points off the local combination of Buddibal Kreeda Trust, seeded 14, managed a 3-1 result. R. Balasubramanium's shock defeat on the fourth board to Tejas Kondedeshmukh after looking poised for an easy victory came before Laxman emerged as a lucky winner against Omkar Patwardhan on the top board.

On the other two boards, Deepan Chakravarthy stopped Soumitra Majumdar and Poobesh Anand overpowered Ninad Puranik. Though not entirely pleased with their showing, the Tamil Nadu players at least had the satisfaction of taking the lead. This was possible due to the top-table deadlock between overnight leader Indian Airlines and former champion Banks Sports Board. Moreover, with top seed Petroleum and second seed LIC scoring an identical and equally unimpressive 3-1 victories over lesser teams, Tamil Nadu maintained its overnight one-point lead over these teams, besides BSB.

The Airlines-Banks encounter had its moment when, on the top board, the country's latest Grandmaster Tejas Bakre outthought the nation's oldest GM Pravin Thipsay in 35 moves of Ruy Lopez. However, this huge gain for Airlines stood nullified as Rahul Shetty went down on the fourth board to Prathamesh Mokal. Satyapragyan drew early with Sudhakar Babu before Vijayalakshmi settled for a similar result against Ravi Hegde.

Meanwhile, Petroleum has a problem on its hands. Its spearhead Surya Shekhar Ganguly went without a win for the third successive round after Central Revenue's Sachidanand Soman held him on the top board. Like against Vikramaditya Kamble on Friday morning, Ganguly's draw offer was turned down. But unlike on Friday, Ganguly managed to salvage half-a-point.

Equally worrying for Petroleum is the form of R.B. Ramesh. Having lost the previous round, Ramesh on Saturday ran into an unpleasant position as early as the ninth move against Vinod Bhagwat and drew immediately. This brought added pressure on Sandipan Chanda and Abhijit Kunte before the duo won. With Petroleum due to meet South Central Railway on Sunday, the favourite is expected to improve its position considerably. Airlines faces Tamil Nadu `A' and LIC plays BSB.

LIC failed to gain maximum off Maharashtra when Sriram Jha tried too hard for a win and eventually went down to Vikramaditya Kamble. Earlier, Dinesh Kumar Sharma, Anup Deshmukh and Atanu Lahiri had taken care of Eesha Karavade, Ravishankar and Akash Thakur, in that order.

On the fifth board, South Central Railway made the most of its encounter against Joseph D'souza Academy and won 4-0 to jump to joint second spot with Airlines. The quartet of Girinath, Raju, Srinivasa Rao and Ramakrishna proved much stronger to their lesser-rated local rivals.

In the women's section, too, Tamil Nadu moved ahead after beating Jammu and Kashmir 4-0. Defending champion Buddhibal Kreeda Trust (Maharashtra) managed to beat LIC 2.5-1.5 after Anuprita Patil held Woman Grandmaster Nisha Mohota on the top board.

Soumya Swaminathan went down to Swati Ghate while Amruta Mokal and Devangi Patankar won against Bindu Saritha and Rajalakshmi, respectively.

The results:

Men (fourth round): Indian Airlines (12) drew with Banks Sports Board (11.5) 2-2; Tamil Nadu `A' (12.5) bt Buddhibal Kreeda Trust (Jr.) (10.5) 3-1; Maharashtra (10) lost to LIC (11.5) 1-3; Central Revenue (9) lost to Petroleum (11.5) 3-1; D'souza Academy (Sr.) (7.5) lost to South Central Railway (12) 0-4; Western Railway (10.5) bt Services (8) 3-1; BSNL (8) lost to D'souza Academy (Jr.) (9.5) 1.5-2.5; Buddhibal Kreeda Trust (sub-jr) (10.5) bt Chandigarh (6.5) 4-0; Southern Maharashtra (8.5) bt MP (7.5) 2.5-1.5; Vidarbha (6) lost to Young Masters Academy (8.5) 1-3; Creative Young Indians (5.5) lost to Sersa Academy (8) 1-3; Nasik Chess Club (8.5) bt Checkmate Club (4.5) 4-0; J&K (6.5) bt Blind Association (4.5) 3-1; Aurangabad (4) lost to Gujarat (7) 0.5-3.5; Bihar (6) bt Alliance (4) 3-1; Anand Buddhibal Mandal (4.5) bt Bhandara (3.5) 2.5-1.5.

Women (second round): Tamil Nadu (8) bt Jammu and Kashmir (0) 4-0; BKT (Maharashtra) (6.5) bt LIC (5.5) 2.5-1.5; Chandigarh (1) lost to Sersa (3) 1-3.

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