Grandmaster Shyamsundar Mohanraj is on a quiet quest to produce more Indian GMs

" I was super desperate to start producing grandmasters for the country," declares GM Shyamsundar Mohanraj in a soft, yet determined, voice right after guiding Srihari LR on his quest to become a grandmaster. Last week, the Chennai-based Srihari became India’s 86th grandmaster, separated from India’s 85th by a gap of just over a year. "It's been a year since India has had a GM. In India we have too many talented players so it's a pity that we have not had a GM for so long. There are so many guys who are within touching distance of the title," he laments. The grandmaster title is the one of the hardest-earned ones in the sport of 64 squares. It's a recognition of talent and aptitude but has to be earned by earning three norms at three different tournaments and crossing a rating threshold of 2500.

- GNS News Agency

Srihari's 10-month-long struggle to get the final grandmaster norm reminded Shyamsundar of his own long wait to get past the finish line. The story goes that back in 2012, he had ticked off all three norms, but his coronation as a grandmaster was held up because he was just 0.2 points away from the 2500 rating.

"I know the pain of the players who struggle so hard to become grandmaster. I was 2499.8 at some point and needed just 0.2 points. It took me six months to get that 0.2 rating. There were times when I was going to play in a tournament and had I withdrawn from that, I would have become a GM because the ratings would have been rounded off to 2500 in the next published rating list. But that’s not how I wanted to become a grandmaster. Becoming a grandmaster is just one of the things in chess. I knew I would become a GM anyway. But my goal was not just to become a GM. I wanted to become a GM in a proper way," Shyamsundar tells The Indian Express.