Mumbai, 29 May: Five-time World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand joined former Indian Cricketer S. Badrinath to share his experiences and talk about the importance of mind skills training and how it helped him as a chess player.
Anand was chatting on a new series 'Mind Masters by MFORE' on Star Sports Tamil to highlight the importance and necessity of mental strength and conditioning in sports.
In the episode, Badrinath also interacted with the young Grandmaster and Chess prodigy, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, who reminisced about meeting Viswanathan Anand for the first time.
Asian Youth Championship Winner Praggnanandhaa shared his fan moment with Chess Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand, "I have been a huge fan of Mr Viswanathan Anand and have been drawing inspiration from him since the time I started playing Chess. I met him in 2012 right after he returned to India after winning the world championship where my school had taken us to meet him.
"It was the moment when I knew and wanted to become like him. A month later, I was representing India at the Asian Youth Championship. I ended up winning the title post which 5 of us from Chennai won the world youth championships and got to meet him again. I was lucky to play a game against him at Tata Steel India. I got to learn a lot from him. He's a huge inspiration," Praggnanandhaa added further.