SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, June 1: FIDE, the world governing body of chess, has appointed Jharkhand’s International Master (IM) Neeraj Kumar Mishra to coach Namibia and Cameroon countries chess teams for the preparation of the Chess Olympiad. The Olympiad is set to be held at Mahabalipuram (Chennai) of Tamil Nadu from July 28 to August 10.
Neeraj Kumar Mishra is the general secretary of the All Jharkhand Chess Association. This is the first time in 22 years that FIDE has assigned any person from Jharkhand to coach chess teams of other countries. Earlier, FIDE had assigned Neeraj Mishra to impart training to players in India.
Neeraj Mishra has been assigned the international responsibility under the Olympiad Support Programme of FIDE for underdeveloped countries for Chennai Chess Olympiad.
Besides Neeraj Mishra, four other senior FIDE trainers of India Vishal Sareen (Delhi), Shekhar Sahu (Odisha), Sharath Tilak (Maharashtra), and S Mishra (Odisha) have been assigned the responsibility to coach teams from other countries. As per the FIDE circular, Vishal Sareen would coach a team of Botswana, Shekhar Sahu to Fiji, Sharath Tilak to Lesotho (Africa) and S Mishra to Barbados. Neeraj Mishra has been assigned to coach the men’s and women’s teams of Namibia and the men’s team of Cameroon. The online coaching is scheduled to start today.
This is the second time that an all Jharkhand Chess Association general secretary has got a FIDE assignment. Earlier, Neeraj was assigned to train players at Shimla, Patna and Bangalore between February18 to March 6 this year.
“ Of course, this is a challenging job (coaching international team for Chess Olympiad) and I will try my best to come upon the expectation of FIDE,” said Neeraj Mishra.
Apart from this, Neeraj Mishra would be the next FIDE arbiter from Jharkhand. He has got this norm in the recently concluded KIIT International Chess Festival that concluded at Bhubaneswar last week. Thus Neeraj Mishra became the 6th FIDE arbiter of Jharkhand.
Jayant Kumar Bhuyan (International Arbiter), Prabhat Kumar (Dhanbad), Dipak Kumar (Ranchi), Vishal Kumar and Chandan Prasad (both Jamshedpur) are FIDE arbiters of Jharkhand.
