"Earliest By 2025": Viswanathan Anand On When India Can Have Next Chess World Champion

Viswanathan Anand firmly believes that India has enough talent to produce the next Chess World Champion but not before 2025 since there is no "quicker pathway" and the process to create one will take that much time. Anand began to groom and mentor the next batch of chess whizkids at his Westbridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA) after COVID-19 induced first lockdown in 2020.

Six of India's Gen-Next talents -- Nihal Sarin, R Praggnanandhaa, Raunak Sadhwani, D Gukesh and R Vaishali and Arjun Erigiasi were inducted -- when WACA came into being in December 2020.

Praggnanandhaa's (Praggu in chess fraternity) personal coach, though, is RB Ramesh.

"If you want the formal title it will be earliest in 2025. There is no quicker pathway, which gives us plenty of time to get ready but there are a lot of details in that," Anand told PTI in a virtual interaction on Wednesday.

With Magnus Carlsen refusing to defend his title, the 2023 World Championship will be between the top two finishers of the Candidates and it is from the next cycle only, that the likes of Gukesh and Praggu can vie for the honours.

Anand's objective is not contribute in an Indian winning a world title but to create a pool of players to make India a "superpower in chess".

"The world championship cycle, let's see what shape it will take in the next 1-2 years and so on. But the World Championship is just an icing on the cake. We should be aiming for the cake, by just getting stronger, making progress.

"If you are strong enough then you are ready for whatever turns up there, that's my attitude. It will be very hard to predict what shape of things the chess world is changing very fast these days," he added.

India finished with an unprecedented nine medals including a