New Delhi: The history of Indian chess often leads in the direction of Viswanathan Anand. He became the first grandmaster from India and was the first Indian to win the World Junior Chess Championship. He also became the first senior world champion from India and the first Indian to be World No.1 in chess.
But India achieved another feat in chess long before the Anand had the chance. Mohamed Rafiq Khan won India’s first-ever medal in Chess at the 1980 Olympiad and Anand was probably 11 years old at that time. Rafiq won a silver medal on the third board at the Chess Olympiad.
The first Chess Olympiad was held in 1927 and is the most prestigious event for national teams. Any country can find an individual player with the potential to become the world champion but to win a medal at the event, a country needs at least three players with brilliant ability. As per the Olympiad format, every nation designates players on the four boards and the player with the strongest qualities usually gets the top board. While the Chess Olympiad is a team event, there are also individual medals for each board.
India’s current men’s and women’s teams won the gold medal in the 2024 Olympiad in Budapest. The event started on September 10 and will end on September 23. India started sending their teams to the Chess Olympiad in 1956 and all the 10 participants in Budapest had access to cutting-edge technology and got training from elite grandmasters from a very early age in their association with the sports.
Who is Rafiq Khan?
The story of Rafiq Khan is even more inspiring as he was a carpenter and fell in love with chess after learning the sport on the patiyas (slab of stone or wood) of Bhopal. He never became a grandmaster or even an international master in chess but his skills on the chessboard earned him a lot of respect in Madhya Pradesh.
The form of chess on the patiyas is a little different from the version of international chess. On patiyas, the pawns can only move one square but in the modern game, pawns can jump ahead two squares. But that didn’t matter much when he played his first competition and won the state championship in his first attempt. At that time, there was a two-tiered national championship in chess: National A and B. Players who did exceptionally well in National B got selected for National A and playing for National A was a matter of great pride back then.
Photo credit: Madhya Pradesh Chess Association/Akshat Khamparia
“Rafiq ji had what you would call a natural talent. He could not read any chess books because books back then would exclusively be in English or Russian. And he was not educated. Despite that, he was a formidable player. His game play was very practical. Not knowing how to read chess books meant that he had very little theoretical knowledge, so he would not do well in the openings. But he would make up for it in the middle and end games” Akshat Khamparia, Madhya Pradesh’s first International Master told The Indian Express.
Khan died in July 2019, and Khamparia said that in modern games players have computers that feed them the best moves. He also added that Khan would be of great help to any player from Madhya Pradesh back then. Apart from the silver medal at the Chess Olympiad, Khan also defeated Belgian chess player Alberic O’Kelly de Galway twice by using the O’Kelly Sicilian (a chess variation).
The story of Rafiq Khan is even more inspiring as he was a carpenter and fell in love with chess after learning the sport on the patiyas. Other Sports Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
