5 reasons why Viswanathan Anand is India's biggest sporting icon post-Independence
Several iconic sportspeople have auctioned their medals and belongings for charity. Indian Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand was one such man. The chess player gave away his 2008 World Chess Championship medal to raise funds for charity, and the sum it was sold for was so measly that it did not deserve a mention in the media.From 1886 to the present day, there have been only 16 men who have been crowned world champions and Anand is one of them. A medal he had won after 11 grueling classical chess games against Vladimir Kramnik was of minuscule value in comparison to a bat with which Sachin Tendulkar scored one out of a hundred centuries in an ODI series game for India, which might just be a drop from an ocean for the Little Master given the size of his trophy cabinet.For anyone who follows or plays chess in India, Vishwanathan Anand is the standard role model. The success he has achieved and the level at which he has achieved it is something every Indian should be hugely proud of. For the general public, Vishy might just be a spectacled guy who plays amazing chess, but he is so much more than that. He single-handedly changed the course of chess history and showed the world that it is not just the Russians who can play the sport at the top level.Major Dhyan Chand is, without a shred of doubt, India’s greatest sporting icon and will always remain so. But if we take a look at our post-independence period, it is Anand who takes the title. The quiet and soft-spoken chess maestro from Chennai pips the God of Cricket to the crown for the sheer weight of his achievements and how he rose to the top of an individual sport and flew our tricolour high across all continents of the globe. Here’s why Vishy is India’s biggest sporting icon after 1947!
#1 Titles, honours and championships
There have only been 16 undisputed World Champions since 1886 and we should be proud of the fact that Vishy is one of them. He held the title for a whopping seven years, as he became the undisputed World Champion in 2007 and then successfully defended his title in 2008 against Russian Vladimir Kramnik. Another successful defense came in 2010 as Anand defeated Veselin Topalov and then once more in 2012 against Boris Gelfand. Many tried, but could not dethrone the king.
He is the only chess player to have won the World Chess Championships in all three formats i.e. knock-out (2000), tournament (2007) and classical (2008 – 2013).In April 2006, Vishy became just the fourth player in history to cross the 2800 ELO mark and was ranked number one in the world for almost two years in a row. He has won a total of 48 titles and is still going strong.
He became India’s first Grandmaster in 1988, the first recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award in 1991-92 and also the first sportsperson to be awarded the Padma Vibhushan, which is the second-highest civilian award in the country, in 2007. Yet it is baffling how Sachin Tendulkar was awarded the Bharat Ratna before him or Major Dhyan Chand.
The Chess Oscar is awarded to the year's best player according to a worldwide poll of leading chess critics, writers, and journalists, and Anand has won it for a record six times in 1997, 1998, 2003, 2004, 2007 and 2008. We have become so accustomed to reading about his wins that only his losses seem to feature in the news now.