Divya Deshmukh is on a felicitation spree, meeting ministers, celebrities and the ilk. Hours and hours of practice; travelling during weekends to Chennai for special chess classes. She has done what no other woman chess player in the country had done before—win the chess World Cup. She will spark another revolution in chess. This time for the women’s game.At the beginning of the week, two Indian women, separated by a generation but united by their passion and excellence in chess, duelled in the final of the women’s World Cup. As soon as Deshmukh, 19, and Koneru Humpy, 38, advanced to the final of one of the game’s most prestigious events, it further entrenched what the 2024 women’s Olympiad had shown.The Chinese may be the foremost practitioners of women’s chess but India’s barrier-shattering women have closed the gap. At the Olympiad in Budapest last year, India, purely going by seedings, didn’t stand a chance of winning gold. But youth and experience (Humpy, D Harika, Deshmukh, Vantika Agarwal and Tania Sachdev) combined to devastating effect. Yet, the chess fraternity wasn’t too keen on announcing a change of guard because China hadn’t sent their strongest contingent.Russia couldn’t send a team and China’s roster lacked the stardust as both the world champion (Ju Wenjun) and the challenger (Tan Zhongyi) were absent. The top-ranked Hou Yifan hadn’t travelled and Lei Tingjie (the other Chinese in last year’s Candidates) was also missing.But both Zhongyi and Tingjie were present at the women’s World Cup in Georgia last month. It’s what makes Deshmukh’s title and Humpy’s run to the final all that bit more special. More importantly, the teen’s victory could have a multiplier effect. “It has the potential to inpsire a lot of girls,” says Swayams Mishra, a GM who played a big role at last year’s Olympiad. “Young kids will aim higher.”Chess, at first glance, may seem like a game suited for both genders without many differences. But it cannot be further from the truth as girls face a lot of barriers, right from the entry level till the elite level. It’s why out of 88 Indian GMs, only four are women (Deshmukh became the fourth on account of winning the World Cup).
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