‘He will never be like Magnus Carlsen’: D Gukesh’s chief trainer makes staggering comparison, claims ‘doesn’t like to…’

Polish grandmaster Grzegorz Gajewski compared D Gukesh to Magnus Carlsen in a huge statement.

D Gukesh’s historic win against Ding Liren in Singapore sent the world into a state of frenzy as the 18-year-old became the youngest-ever world chess champion. The Indian grandmaster defeated defending champion Liren in the decisive fourteenth game of the World Chess Championship. The win saw Gukesh also become the second Indian to ever win the World Championship title, with Viswanathan Anand claiming it five times.

Former chess players, celebrities and fans took to social media to hail Gukesh. But it also received a negative response from some, including Magnus Carlsen. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history, Carlsen downplayed Gukesh’s achievement and also rejected a possibility of challenging him for the title. Recently, Carlsen also called the classical chess format the worst way to decide the best player.

Speaking to The Hindu after Gukesh’s win vs Liren, the Indian grandmaster’s chief trainer Grzegorz Gajewski decided to compare him to Carlsen. The Polish grandmaster feels that Gukesh has the ability to mimic Carlsen’s playing style, but also stated that he would never be like the Norwegian grandmaster.

“He will never be a player like Magnus Carlsen in the sense of being an intuitive kind of a player,” he said.

“He likes to calculate and he likes to go deep into position. He doesn’t like to make moves just purely based on intuition. He will never play in the Magnus style, but he can very well mimic it,” he added.

When asked if Gukesh is one of the best when it comes to calculation in chess, he replied, “Vishy [Anand]. In terms of talent for calculation, perhaps no one in the history of the game could match him. But at the same time, he was so fast that sometimes it became his weakness. Gukesh somewhat resembles a young Fabiano Caruana.”

Gajewski was a second to Anand in the World Chess Championship in 2014 in Sochi. He has also worked as Anand’s second in other events too. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, he has taken up a role at the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy in India, and has been working with players. Since 2023, he has also been Gukesh’s second, assisting him at the 2024 Candidates too, which saw him qualify for a title face-off with Liren.

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Jasprit Bumrah: The India sling king who’s revelling in Australia

With his “slingshot” delivery and ability to unsettle the world’s best batsmen, India’s Jasprit Bumrah is widely regarded as one of cricket’s greatest fast bowlers.

The 31-year-old has defied career-threatening back problems and on Wednesday overtook Kapil Dev to become India’s leading Test wicket-taker in Australia.

Bumrah, India’s player of the series so far, took nine wickets in the third Test at Brisbane to move to 53 in Australia and past Dev’s previous mark of 51.

He was player of the match in India’s 295-run victory in Perth in the opening Test, before the hosts levelled the series in Adelaide.

He is the leading bowler on either side with 21 wickets in the series so far at a scarcely believable average of 10.90. The next best are Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins with 14 dismissals each.

“I think he is definitely India’s greatest fast bowler,” former Australia captain Ricky Ponting said of Bumrah.

“In T20 cricket, one-day cricket and Test match cricket, he’s clearly the best right now.”

Travis Head, who has excelled with the bat for Australia in the five-match series scoring two centuries and a fifty, went even further.

“Jasprit is probably going to go down as one of the greatest fast bowlers to play the game,” said Head.

Bumrah, captaining in the first Test in the absence of Rohit Sharma, made life hell for the Australian batsmen on a bouncing Perth pitch.

He took 5-30 from 18 overs as the hosts were shot out for 104 and followed up with 3-42 in the second innings as India won by 295 runs.

His unorthodox front-on action allows him to release the ball late and he can bowl yorkers at will.

Australia’s quick bowler Josh Hazlewood marvelled at Bumrah’s idiosyncratic style, which was honed in his childhood while practising in a small car park near his family’s apartment in the city of Ahmedabad.

“If you haven’t faced him before, it can really unsettle you,” Hazlewood said.

“He lets the ball go way out in front, so he’s pretty much half a yard quicker than what the actual speed gun says.

“He’s like a slingshot loading up and letting go.”

Bumrah’s match haul in Perth had some pundits questioning the legality of his deliveries, which appear to be bowled with a bent elbow.

Australian great and former India coach Greg Chappell soon jumped to Bumrah’s defence, describing the debate as “nonsense” and deeming Bumrah’s action “unequivocally clean”.

Bumrah has had his share of struggles and only came back into the India team last year after a serious back injury that kept him out of action in 2022 and 2023.

He played a key part in India’s June T20 World Cup triumph in Barbados, where he was instrumental in preventing South Africa scoring 30 runs off the last 30 balls to win the final, a performance dubbed a “masterclass” by Rohit.

The seeds of his greatness were sown at his Indian Premier League team Mumbai Indians, where he has been a fixture for more than a decade.

Former New Zealand batsman John Wright scouted the pace bowler from his home state of Gujarat and brought him to Mumbai in 2013, when the Indians won the first of their five IPL titles.

Bumrah made an instant impact by dismissing Bengaluru’s star batsman Virat Kohli in his first match.

Head, who fell to Bumrah in the second innings at Perth, said he loved trying to solve the conundrum that is the enigmatic bowler.

“It’s going to be nice to look back at your career and tell the grandkids that you faced him,” he said.

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This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.

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Ding snatches draw from jaws of defeat

Gukesh has Ding on the ropes for most of Game 7 but the world champion digs deep to escape with scores level at halfway

Bengaluru: After a quiet game in his previous turn with the White, Gukesh arrived for Game 7, armed and ready to spill blood on the board. He drove daggers through Ding Liren and nearly mummified him before the reigning world champion returned from the dead with some stellar endgame defence to force a draw. The spectators’ arena broke into a rapturous applause as the players shook hands after a game that lasted 72 moves and over five hours. It’s the longest game played so far in this World Championship match and the contest remains tied at 3.5-3.5, with seven more classical games remaining.

It mustn’t be easy for Gukesh to reconcile with a setback like this, having had his opponent on the ropes through the greater part of the game. “It’s never pleasant to miss a winning position but I’m happy that I could outplay my opponent quite easily in the opening,” said Gukesh in the press conference that followed, “It’s a missed chance but he also missed some chances earlier in the match… but quite a few positives to take away from it. I guess the biggest lesson is to stay focused and convert good positions.”

The Indian teen won the opening battle on trotting out 1.Nf3 for the first time in this match and went on to uncork a rare, ingenious 7.Re1 move that was clearly cooked up by his team. It cast Ding right away into contemplation for over 20 minutes. “Re1 is a relatively new move and the point was to go dxc4-e4 and get a new position on the board… he didn’t react in a very precise way so I guess the idea worked,” Gukesh said.

Ding later admitted that he was completely thrown off by the move. “I came back from the toilet and was totally shocked,” he said. “I took a lot of time to come up with a reply. Even then it wasn’t accurate.” The world champion ended up responding with the principled 7. dxc4 which led to a fascinating fight for the centre. Ding was soon down to 24 minutes on the clock by move 21.

Gukesh went on to make the strategic mistake of rushing to trade the dark-squared bishops, and then went after Black’s c4 pawn. Here he perhaps overlooked Ding’s resource of springing his knight back into the game. Ding defended bravely and even looked like he might make it over the line alive, with a draw. All he had to do was manoeuvre his knight, hit move 41 and then figure out the rest. But nerves can make players do the inexplicable things. With the clock ticking down to its dying seconds on move 40, Ding blundered. Seven seconds on his clock, he pushed his King to the e5 square instead of galloping his knight to c8 – which would have kept his drawing chances intact. Leela Chess Zero right away pegged Gukesh’s chances for a win at 75 percent, from roughly 19 percent.

After the players reached time control, Ding was on the ropes. Down a pawn, with a weak king on d5 in an objectively lost endgame, he was again back burning through his clock, shaking his head, occasionally looking up at his opponent and trying to pick out the right move out of twenty-odd tempting, false continuations. Gukesh sat at the other end, hands folded across his chest, watching the reigning world champion suffer. Around move 44, Leela gave Gukesh 92 per cent chance of winning the game.

But after spending over 22 minutes trawling through defensive resources, Ding had a few answers. “I was fearing that I was getting outplayed,” Ding said, “But my position was maybe not so bad, I should be more confident of my position.”

Gukesh’s decision to go Bd1 on move 46 allowed Ding to stir up activity. It’s here that Ding brought his endgame skills and resilience to bear – not faltering, even though Gukesh found ways to keep the game going.

Ding’s idea was to restrict White’s bishop and drum up counterplay for his knight. Black’s knight was centralised, King was activated while White’s bishop was on the first rank. Ding went on to trade off the rooks and got rid of White’s final pawn to make a miraculous escape and take a half a point for his efforts. Ding’s team heaved a sigh of relief. “Today I did not give up in a very difficult position… My second (Ni Hua) said I saved my life,” Ding told Chess.com. In the end it was brilliant preparation from Gukesh, outplaying his opponent thoroughly before the reigning world champion dug deep and summoned a fightback. Gukesh was not quite able to see through his opponent’s resources in the endgame.

The match moves to Game 8 on Wednesday and Ding will have the White pieces. It’s possible he might want to play a solid, quiet game and we could see the fireworks back again for Gukesh’s game with the White pieces on Thursday.

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