Sree Charani’s ice-cool management. Sheetal Devi’s relentless grit. Chess queen Divya Deshmukh unleashing gambits. In 2025, India’s younger sportswomen didn’t simply compete — they conquered. From Unnati Hooda and Tanvi Sharma ushering in a brand new period in badminton to the rise of one other ‘Phogat’ — Suruchi — this time on the capturing vary, Ankita Bhagat rattling South Korea’s archery dynasty, Preeti Panwar’s scientific energy within the ring, or Antim Panghal reminding she nonetheless owns the mat. Categorical Sports activities dives deep into ‘Gen She’ – the trailblazers who saved the Tricolour flying excessive.
Divya Deshmukh has spent 2025 taking part in a uncommon model of high-risk, high-reward chess. Whereas the remainder of the world continues to be gushing about her exploits from July in Georgia’s Batumi — the place one after the other she picked off World No.6 Zhu Jiner, veteran Harika Dronavalli, former girls’s world champion Tan Zhongyi and, Indian chess legend Koneru Humpy, on her strategy to successful the FIDE Girls’s World Cup title — these within the sport are nonetheless marveling at her choices off the board which have marked her as an outlier.
Not like most feminine gamers on the planet, who play an occasional open event (with males in competitors) in a yr, Deshmukh has ventured off the overwhelmed monitor at each alternative she might in 2025. She performed in 4 occasions this yr the place she went toe-to-toe with males: the Tata Metal Challengers at Wijk aan Zee, Prague Challengers, the FIDE Grand Swiss and the FIDE World Cup. She calls these “must-have” experiences, the best way you’d describe gadgets on a bucket listing throughout an tour abroad.
These forays into the open part have resulted in loads of defeats for Deshmukh. On the Tata Metal Challengers at Wijk aan Zee she misplaced eight out of 13 video games after which had 5 defeats from 9 video games on the Prague Challengers. However as soon as she turned a grandmaster in a single shot because of successful the FIDE Girls’s World Cup in July, she enrolled herself for some extra ‘should have’ experiences: taking part in on the Grand Swiss and the FIDE World Cup in Goa, the place she was eradicated within the second spherical itself.
“I don’t know if it’s her resolution or her coach’s, but it surely’s extraordinarily sensible to play in these tournaments with prime male gamers. It’s a really sticky topic in chess, however if you wish to attain your absolute peak and also you need to be nearly as good as attainable, that you must play in opposition to the very best stage of competitors. Even when she’s struggling at occasions — and I feel in Grand Swiss she misplaced fairly just a few video games — she nonetheless is getting that have. Actually, she had some alternatives to win a few of these video games,” says the World No.2 Hikaru Nakamura.
Like an AI mannequin
Divya Deshmukh has spent 2025 taking part in a uncommon model of high-risk, high-reward chess. (Image Credit score: Anna Shtourman/FIDE)
Those that have labored carefully with Deshmukh over the previous couple of months warn that like an AI mannequin continually getting stronger, Deshmukh continues to be evolving.
“You’ll be able to actually see the transformation in her sport: her weaknesses are slowly turning into much less and fewer obvious. Her play’s turning into extra steady,” says Abhimanyu Puranik, who has recognized Deshmukh for the previous three years, and was just lately revealed as a second behind her World Cup successful run.
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Puranik factors out how Deshmukh’s sport is turning into ‘extra full’ daily. He causes that when a participant is younger the strikes usually lack ‘refinement’.
“Your opening is simply not as full. You don’t know a whole lot of issues. Within the center sport and finish sport, you typically take an excessive amount of threat. You calculate approach an excessive amount of, or approach too much less. It looks like she’s refining all of that,” says Puranik.
Puranik additionally factors at her mentality as one of many causes that give her an edge.
“She simply raises her stage in wonderful methods. Possibly it’s kind of an inborn expertise that every time a state of affairs is further essential, she’s going to simply increase her stage. When she gained the World Cup, I used to be not that stunned, as a result of should you see, she performed very properly within the Olympiad final yr. She has additionally gained some very sturdy occasions just like the Asian Championship and World Junior Championship,” says Puranik.
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He says that in chess one defeat can simply turn out to be two and two can spiral right into a slide with a wholesome dose of pessimism. However not with Deshmukh.
“She’s typically very steady in our method, irrespective of how her performances are, she’ll have the identical method. That’s very arduous to do as a result of as quickly as you have got just a few defeats you need to change issues and in a drastic approach,” provides Puranik.
Hou Yifan, arguably one of many best feminine chess gamers in historical past, additionally sees some traces of her character within the Indian. Yifan gave up the Girls’s World Champion’s throne to pursue different issues in life like lecturers at Oxford College. Deshmukh, too, has repeatedly mentioned that she doesn’t consider herself as solely a chess participant.
Moderately than be part of the refrain of admirers about her chess expertise, Yifan says: “She’s superb. However what’s additionally essential is that she has a ardour for chess. She seems to be like she’s actually having fun with taking part in chess. Her character can also be a plus. There are gamers who simply take chess as a career or as a job. It’s concerning the work hours, sure hours per day. To me that’s not okay.”
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Lengthy-term profit
Nakamura then takes a leap of creativeness into the longer term and says that there’s a probability that Deshmukh could possibly be preventing it out for the Girls’s World Championship title some day, the place she might doubtless discover the 2 Chinese language stars, Zhu Jiner and present girls’s world champion Ju Wenjun standing in her path to the throne. He then factors at Deshmukh’s different compatriots.
“What actually units her aside after I have a look at Humpy, for instance. I don’t bear in mind Humpy actually taking part in in males’s occasions within the final decade or two regardless that she was very clearly the very best feminine participant in India. Identical goes for Harika. I can’t actually recall her taking part in that many tournaments in addition to a few open tournaments she performed. The truth that Divya is doing that may solely have long-term advantages. Even when it’s unlucky that she’s misplaced a whole lot of video games proper now, that can enhance her stage,”provides Nakamura. “Among the many gamers exterior of the Chinese language, I feel she’s in all probability the very best proper now. Vaishali could also be shut behind, however I really feel like Divya, being fairly a bit youthful, has much more room for progress.”
And that ought to be a scary prospect for the remainder of the game. Ladies and men.