Starting a journey

Having succumbed to the temptation of putting my thoughts on the web, I picked Saturday as the 'auspicious day' to begin my journey in the blogsphere. It was the day Viswanathan Anand was starting the defence of his World Championship crown against Bulgarian Veselin Topalov in Sofia.
Undoubtedly the biggest chess event of 2010, the match pits two of the best players of this generation against each other and has caused lot of excitement in chess circles because of the characters involved.
In one corner is the ice cool Vishy Anand of India, the most respected and liked player in chess who has always kept away from controversies – at times at his own cost. In the other corner is Topalov of the Toiletgate fame, especially his manager Silvio Danialov, the most controversial personality the sport has seen in recent times.
Everyone expects great chess, some tough matches and a bit of controversy mostly from the Bulgarian side, which had started the mind games well before the start of the tournament with taunts and jibes at the World Champion.
Topalov blamed Anand of not doing enough to get the match organized in India, which seemed a baseless allegation made by people who know nothing about Indian sport. Anand is aware; his job is playing chess and not organizing matches. He also knows that any such effort on his part would have ended in heartbreak as in India it is very difficult to raise big monies for any sport other than cricket – it would also have left him without much time to prepare for the match. Raising sponsorship worth Rs 20-30 crore for a game, which is not spectator friendly and has no mass following in India is every difficult, nay next to impossible even for someone like Anand.
Though Anand did not respond, the Bulgarians kept at it and as things turned out, Anand came under further pressure as the volcanic ash clouds disrupted his travel plans over Europe and he reached Sofia four days late. He had to fight tooth and nail to get the first round postponed by one day.
Though the off-board drama has added to the excitement of the clash, one realizes that it is nothing compared to that generated by the 1972 clash involving Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky or the one between the two Ks – Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov.
So this is a great time to start my journey and I hope to continue, sharing with my friends my opinion on various issues related to Indian sport.