SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, April 15: Jharkhand’s girls and boys stole the show with their outstanding performance in the National under-12 championship 2022 which concluded in Mandya district of Karnataka on Thursday evening.
The best performer from Jharkhand was Saara Jain, who scored 7 points to her credit. She was the 36th seed in the championship and through her outstanding performance, got 27th rank in the country at last.
Jamshedpur’s Saara is the under-9 champion of the state and is considered one of the top ten players in the country in her age group. She got the 3rd position in the national school chess championship held in Raipur in 2019 and the 5th position in the national girls’ championship held in Vijayawada in 2019.
The daughter of Arvind Jain (CA) and Dimple Jain, Saara won a silver medal in the World School Chess Championship in Romania in 2017. She has also won in Asian School Chess.
Among the boys of Jharkhand, Souryadipta Sarkar (Jamshedpur) with 6.5 points got the 55th rank. Adhiraj Mitra (Jamshedpur) with 6.5 points got 67th rank, Debanjan Sinha (Jamshedpur) with 6 points earned 98th rank and Abhiraj Dey (Ranchi) with 5.5 points got the 112th rank.
However, after the conclusion of the final round, Goutham Krishna H of Kerala and Subhi Gupta of Uttar Pradesh lifted the championship trophy by winning their last game against G Akash of Tamil Nadu and Sherali Pattnaik of Uttarakhand respectively.
Jharkhand state chess association secretary Neeraj Mishra, chief executive officer (CEO) Pritam Singh, national coach Jayant Bhuyan, East Singhbhum Association secretary NK Tiwary and former state association treasurer Arvind Sinha have highly praised the performance of Jharkhand players and said that the state showed its strength at the national championship.
National instructor (coach) cum international arbiter Jayant Bhuyan while praising the success of the state in the national championship said, “Due to closure of offline activities for the last two years in wake of Covid-19 lockdown, our players suffered a lot. They had not seen the strength of other players during the period to make a strategy. However, given the very short time for preparation, their result is encouraging.”
East Singhbhum secretary NK Tiwary, whose four players got national rank, gave the credit for success to the players, their coach and parents.
“Despite lockdown, the association kept them in touch by organizing an online competition for the players. They are promising players of the state as well as our nation and have the potential to earn International Master (IM) and Grand Master (GM) norms,” said NK Tiwary.
Arvind Sinha of Dhanbad said that Jharkhand is an established force in national chess and will continue to dominate in the coming days.
