Indian men bounced back after an opening day loss with a convincing 4-0 victory over Cyprus in the second round of the 37th Chess Olympiad in Turin, Italy.
After a 1-3 drubbing at the hands of Morocco in the first round of the biennial chess event, it was an impressive recovery by the Indians as they took the team score to a respectable 5 points out of a possible 8 games.
The second seeded team shed the opening day blues and won on all four boards with Grandmasters Krishnan Sasikiran, P Harikrishna, Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Sandipan Chanda coming out trumps.
With 11 rounds still to go and Viswanathan Anand set to join the team, it seems on the cards that they will be in the reckoning for a medal but the defeat at the hands of Morocco in round one will certainly haunt the men for some time.
Interestingly, the African team lost in the second round to United States by a huge 0.5-3.5 margin.
Krishnan Sasikiran, who had rested in the first round, took board one in his first appearance in the Olympiad this year and prevailed over Antoniou Antonis, rated more than 500 points below him.
On the second board, GM P Harikrishna romped home with an easy victory as black against Kassinopoullos Polydoros.
Though the Indian supremacy was never in doubt, it still took some time for Surya Shekhar Ganguly to turn the heat on Aristotelous Vasileios, while on the final board Sandipan Chanda put his first round loss behind him and crushed Savva Panikos. Diwakar Prasad Singh was rested for the round.
