The Hindu : Sport : Purushothaman and Kruttika hog limelight

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 15, 2007
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Purushothaman and Kruttika hog limelight

Rakesh Rao

MUMBAI: T. Purushothaman and Kruttika Nadig shared the limelight for their exemplary showings against the top seeds in their respective sections of the Asian junior chess championship at the Goregaon Sports Club here on Friday.

Purushothaman, a second year Commerce student from Guntur, accounted for a complacent Parimarjan Negi to provide the biggest upset of the competition. Later, Kruttika made light of a 100-point rating difference with Iran’s Atousa Pourkashian and came out with honours even.

After two rounds, 11 boys and only two girls had perfect scores. Among the girls, defending champion Mary Ann Gomes and her good friend former National junior champion Soumya Swaminathan set up the clash of the leaders after contrasting victories.

Iranian third seed Sayed Alavi and Sahaj Grover, both former World under-10 champions, battled for 43 moves of Carokann before the Delhi-youngster faltered under time-pressure and lost.

The other overnight leaders who emerged victorious were, Deep Sengupta, S. P. Sethuraman, M. Shyam Sundar, who surprised eighth seed Akshat Khamparia, Aditya Udeshi, M.R. Lalith Babu, P. Karthikeyan, Vishnu Prasanna, Snehal Bhosale and Rakesh Kulkarni.

Purushothaman had beaten Parimarjan a few years ago in Ghaziabad but then the Delhi youngster was an unknown quantity. On this day, Purushothaman proved that he was not intimidated by Parimarjan’s stature and coasted to an impressive victory in 36 moves of Slav Defence.

Parimarjan, who played the last few moves of this game with only seconds left on his clock, admitted that he overestimated his position.

“I got it wrong in the middle-game after I failed to cash in on the slight advantage I had. Thereafter, Purushothaman played solidly and never gave me another chance,” said the 14-year-old.

Purushothaman, rated 262 points below Parimarjan, was modest about his victory.

“Once he committed a mistake, it was easy to find the right continuation and win,” said the youngster.

Flawless

Like Purushothaman, Kruttika from Pune, too, had white pieces against the top-ranked player in her section. She played flawlessly against Atousa to come out undefeated in an equal endgame in 55 moves of Sicilian Defence. In this positional battle, both players matched each other and reached an ending involving a rook each and pawns.

On a day when the top four boards in the girls section followed the Sicilian Defence, second seed Kiran Manisha Mohanty had to take draw through perpetual checks against her roommate and fellow Orissa player Padmini Rout in 42 moves.

Mary needed 62 moves to overpower her roommate P. Sivasankari while Soumya stopped Bangaldesh’s Liza Shamima Akter after 43 turns.

The results (Indians unless stated):

Second round (Open): T. Purushothaman (2) bt Parimarjan Negi (1); Sahaj Grover (1) lost to Sayed Alavi (Iri) (2); Deep Sengupta (2) bt Swapnil Dhopade (1); Swayams Mishra (1) lost to S. P. Sethuraman (2); Akshat Khamparia (1) lost to Shyam Sundar (2);Meghan Gupta (1) lost to Aditya Udeshi (2); M. R. Lalith Babu (2) bt Sagar Shah (1); N. Surendran (1) lost to P. Karthikeyan (2); S. Nitin ( 1.5) drew with Bitan Banerjee (1.5); Vishnu Prasanna (2) bt Aniruddha Deshpande (1); Snehal Bhosale (2) bt Debashis Das (1); Saravana Krishnan (1) lost to Rakesh Kulkarni (2); B. Adhiban (1.5) bt K. Priyadarshan (0.5); Vishwesh Kochrekar (1) drew with G. Santhosh Kumar (1); Aswin Jayaram (1) bt Neel Pethe (0); Lekh Mithawala ( 0.5) drew with Abhishek Das (0.5); Abhishek Kelkar (1) bt Ahmed Assad (Mle) (0); Nikhil Kamat (1) bt Akash Damle (0); Abhishek Kenkre (0) bt Shreyans K. Shah (1); Shiven Khosla (1) bt Shubham Kumthekar (0).

Girls: Kruttika Nadig (1.5) drew with Atousa Pourkashiyan (Iri) (1.5); Kiran Manisha Mohanty (1.5) drew with Padmini Rout (1.5); Mary Ann Gomes (2) bt P. Sivasankari (1); Soumya Swaminathan (2) bt Liza Shamina Akter (Ban) (1); P. Priya ( 1.5) bt Pon N. Krithika (0.5); Mitali Patil (1.5) bt Tara Rahimi (Iri) (0.5); S. Harini (1) bt Y.G. Sriharika (0); Sonakshi Rathore (0) lost to P. Uthra (1); Bhakti Juikar (0) lost to J. Mohana Priya (1).

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