Meet the Indian-origin chess prodigies taking Britain by storm
In August last year, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, on the verge of announcing a mega financial package for chess in the UK, invited two young chess prodigies to 10 Downing Street. They were eight-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan and 14-year-old Shreyas Royal – both British citizens of Indian origin, just like Sunak himself.
Since the pandemic, India has gained a reputation as a land of young chess stars, but these two Indian-origin prodigies have made a reputation for themselves in England. Last year, Bodhana won the under-8 title at the World Cadet Championship. She is also the World Youth Champion and is presently ranked 30th in England in the women’s category. Shreyas is currently ranked 19th in England among active players.
Over the course of two months, Bodhana has defeated three International Masters — Lorin D’Costa at the European Blitz Championship in Zagreb last month, and Lela Javakhishvili and Nurgyul Salimova at the European Women’s Blitz Championship in Monaco last week — besides holding multiple others like Grandmaster Elisabeth Paehtz to draws.
Shreyas, too, has made waves recently. At the London Chess tournament in December 2023, he managed to defeat GM Jules Moussard and drew with players like India’s Gukesh, a considerable achievement since Shreyas’ rating was at least 200 points lower than everyone else in the tournament. The performance at the London event also helped Shreyas earn his second Grandmaster norm, which puts him on course to become the youngest GM to represent England.
From left: Shreyas Royal with Vishy Anand; Shreyas Royal with Nihal Sarin; Shreyas Royal with Gukesh (Pics: Jitendra Singh)
While Bodhana and Shreyas are British citizens, their families are first-generation migrants. Bodhana’s parents lived in Tamil Nadu’s Trichy while Shreyas was born in Bengaluru.
“I’m an economic migrant to the UK, having moved in 2007. I work in the IT sector. Bodhana was born and brought up in London. She started playing chess when she was just five years old. We had no plans to make her play chess. She just stumbled across a chess board at home, and started to play,” Bodhana’s father Sivanandan Velayutham tells The Indian news.
“I knew just basic chess, so I downloaded Chess.com to help her learn by watching the videos there. Back then, I just got her a free version, thinking she might not continue the sport,” he said.
Not only did Bodhana continue playing the sport, soon medals and trophies – spoils of winning online tournaments – started arriving at their home. Her talent also saw her become an ambassador for Chess.com’s app for kids, ChessKid (the app also supports Shreyas).
While adulation for the young star has been unrestrained in the chess community, her parents are wary of letting it get to her head. “Her rating is 1856. You need to be 2500 to become a GM. It’s not easy… it’s miles away. She’s getting a lot of appreciation because of her age and how she’s winning. But we just make sure that she’s grounded and doesn’t start thinking she’s a legend or something. Things can go wrong if not taken with the right attitude,” Velayutham says.
As a school kid growing up in London’s Harrow, Bodhana does not have the same luxury of getting completely immersed in the sport the way Indian GMs like Gukesh did early on in their career.
“On weekdays, she spends most of her time in school. It’s not like the India model where you can skip school as an athlete. So she leaves at 8 am for school and then returns at 4 pm. She plays chess for about an hour a day. There are days when we go for chess tournaments in the evenings. But only on weekends does she spend two or three hours practising,” he says.
Rishi Sunak with Bodhana Sivanandan and Shreyas Royal at an event at 10 Downing Street in August 2023 (Credit: No 10 Downing Street’s Flickr Account)
Chess to the rescue
Shreyas was also around Bodhana’s age when his chess talent made headlines in England. The tale goes that his father Jitendra’s work visa to the UK was expiring and was just days away from moving the family to Norway, when the chess fraternity in the country reached out to British MPs to lobby for Shreyas to stay because of his “exceptional chess talent”. UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid eventually agreed to tweak visa norms and England got itself a prodigy.
“I had initially come to the UK for one year, then got an extension on my visa for another five years. But there was a cooling off period, so we were told we would have to leave. We were packing our things, when we got a call from the Home Office that we could stay on because of Shreyas’ exceptional talent,” Jitendra tells The Indian news.
Rishi Sunak with Bodhana Sivanandan and Shreyas Royal and their families at an event at 10 Downing Street in August 2023 (Credit: No 10 Downing Street’s Flickr Account)
“Our local MP Matthew Pennycook and Leeds MP Rachel Reeves, besides the English Chess Federation, really fought for us to stay. Now we’re British citizens,” he adds.
There is a fascinating story behind his name too – when an astrologer suggested the initials of SR, his mother chose Shreyas (meaning superior) and plucked Royal out of thin air, anglicising his name much before he had even been to the UK.
Shreyas, who spends five to six hours on chess daily, has come within touching distance of becoming chess royalty – the GM title. He’s missed the third and final norm by a whisker a couple of times, including at the FIDE Grand Swiss Tournament. But he’s hopeful that he’ll cross the hurdle soon enough. “Maybe me playing for England is a slight loss for India. But I feel India already has enough chess prodigies. I don’t think I am such a huge loss (for a country like India),” Shreyas says.
