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The First Great Britain v India Match |
Back in 1996 India was about to join the International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) and were competing in their first international matches. One of the earliest matches that they organised was a friendly international against Great Britain, for whom I was the regular top board at the time.
The board one meeting of this encounter was a genuine heavyweight match-up. I was to be selected as top board of England’s Olympiad side before the match ended in 1998 while A.G.Nagaradjane, who was India’s number one, was to be crowned Indian champion in the same year.
Our two games (it was a double pairing match) are given below. Although both were drawn, and both started life as Ruy Lopez Exchange Variations, they were hard-fought and the peace negotiations were not begun until all winning chances for each side had been exhausted.
Mr. Nagaradjane had seen annotations of many of my games in various magazines, and he suggested at the time that I should provide notes to our two games. To my shame, it has taken me twenty-five years or so to get around to doing so, but I hope that these will be important for historians of Indian correspondence chess. Both Mr. Nagaradjane and I retired from correspondence chess when computers became too strong for us to compete against a few years after these games. I have been unable to find out how he is getting along nowadays, but it is my fervent hope that he sees this article and has fond memories of our struggles between the years 1996 and 1998.
Prior to giving these games, I would like to send my best wishes to Mr. Nagaradjane and also to all of the other correspondence chessfriends in India, I hope that you all enjoy my annotations and that you get a lot of pleasure from all of your own future games.