Over the last few weeks, Srinath Narayanan has put his team through the proverbial wringer. The captain of the India 'A' team — one of the favourites to medal in the Open category at the 44th chess Olympiad — used open training sessions every day after breakfast. A few hours after dinner, the team would still be at it, reliving the day's session. But it's not been wall to wall in terms of intensity. To ensure team spirit, they also mixed and matched things a bit.
Here's Srinath explaining what a typical training day has looked like with his wards, P Harikrishna, Vidit Gujrathi, Arjun Erigaisi, SL Narayanan and Krishnan Sasikiran.
"The timing is informal," he told this daily.
"We have breakfast together and it starts then. That session goes on till lunch, till about 2.00 to 2.30 PM. It involves going through drills, working on specific things and playing training games.
"We go again post lunch till dinner when we break at around 7.30 PM. Post that is when we begin winding down for the day which is very important after a tiring day."
Now, what do these sessions entail? They work on specific parts of chess — opening and endgame to name two — and also play some training games. To get a better understanding, Srinath, who was captain of the team that won joint gold at the online Olympiad in 2020, uses a cricketing analogy.
"In layman's terms, it deals with one-on-one contests. How did Sachin Tendulkar counter the threat of Shane Warne when the Australian came to India? He would look at how he would bowl, and where he would bowl and prepare accordingly. It has a lot of one-on-one components, very information based. You try to visualise what can happen and you prepare for it. Some part of it is information based, you collect data, you feed information to yourself and part of it is how muscle memory works. Muscle memory in physical sports (in cricket at least) would be the bowler bowling in a particular spot. In chess, there are very similar patterns. Playing training games takes care of the similar patterns component."
The chess aspect is just one part of the training session. To keep spirits as high as possible within the camp, the team has taken a conscious decision to do most things together, including eating and watching movies.
"The team bonding is coming along nicely," Srinath, a Grandmaster, explained. "We essentially eat together, go on walks together, go to pool together. We also play casual games together." Casual games include lots of chess variants where two players team up to make alternate moves (almost like the doubles in table tennis). The team also plays Avalanche — a card game — post dinner or settle into watch a movie.
Interestingly, one thing the team haven't been doing over the last 2-3 weeks is having streaming sessions on Twitch. Srinath explained the rationale. "There is no streaming or any kind of content going on," the 28-year-old Srinath said.
"Nothing for the last two weeks. Everything else is on complete pause right now as a lot of focus and attention is taken away by the preparation."
India have medalled in each of the last two Olympiads — online versions in 2020 (joint gold with Russia) and 2021 (bronze) — but an over-the-board event is a different beast. Srinath is quick to caution that India face a significant challenge.
"Online was completely different. We had different categories. Open, junior, women, women juniors. India had a bit more of an advantage because they have the best talent among the juniors so there was a clear superiority. With the lack of categories (this time), the field is more levelled."
In the venue itself, you talk to people and they are quick to envy the country's riches, especially in the Open category. Will they be able to translate the unquestionable talent to something substantial in the game's blue-riband team event? The next 10 days will provide answers.