Chess Olympiad: Savitha saves the day for Indian women; open team held

A late equaliser from B. Savitha Shri helped the Indian women draw with Kazakhstan in the Chess Olympiad on Thursday. The men’s team also was held to a draw by Azerbaijan at Samarkand.

With the tournament in its business-end, it indeed was not ideal for India, the defending champion in both the sections. It could, of course, have been much worse if Savitha hadn’t been able to pull off that hard-fought win against Elnaz Kaliakhmet.

The 19-year-old from Chennai has been having a dream Olympiad debut in Uzbekistan. She has won all her seven games and is well poised to win an individual medal regardless of how her team fares. She was in a must-win situation on this day, as India was trailing 1-2, thanks to R. Vaishali’s loss to Alua Nurman on the second board. Koneru Humpy and Divya Deshmukh had drawn their games.