World champ mobbed at midnight
BISWAJYOTI BRAHMATNN
NEW DELHI, October 15: It was an onslaught of a different kind – something that world chess champion Viswanathan Anand must not be very accustomed to. Soon after winning the World Championship at Mexico last month, Anand had said he was keen to see what type of reception he was going to get after reaching home.
He was, then, reacting to the tumultuous welcome that the Indian cricketers received in Mumbai following the Twenty20 World Cup triumph in South Africa.
The reception that the 37-year-old himself got here in the wee hours on Monday would have been completely unexpected. It was a chaotic crowd which received him at the airport – he was even pushed and shoved at the Indira Gandhi International Airport where he arrived, after winning his second world crown late last month.
The plan by the organisers, a top IT education company for whom Anand is a brand ambassador, was to have a short programme at the airport to felicitate the maestro but it went horribly wrong the very moment Anand stepped out of the terminal about an hour past midnight.
As Anand emerged, he was virtually pushed to the place where the felicitation was planned as the “volunteers” hired by the company as well as the media personnel jostled around to get close to him. Clearly, there was no system in place to check the unruly crowd which created an almost stampede-like situation.
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Anand is the best!
He has to win the match against Kramnik before I call him world champion.
‘He has to win the match against Kramnik before I call him world champion’
Boy! Some people are really bitchy,jealous or just plain racist!
As for Anand,apart from Kasparov he has consistently been at the top of the chessworld for over a decade. All without any hanky panky. No toilet gate, no strange handsignals etc etc. He is for the present the true World Champion.
World Champion Anand!