Just days after Viswanathan Anand made India proud by yet again bagging the world’s best tag in Bonn, Kolkata young guns Sayantan Das and Diptayan Ghosh returned to the city today after conquering the world in the junior circuit last week.

Young Sayantan won the prestigious Under-12 title in the World Youth Chess Championship in Vietnam last week, while Diptayan finished a creditable fourth in the Under-10 world category, apart from bagging the gold in the Asian Youth Chess Championship.

“I am a great fan of Anand. I want to play like Anand someday,” gushed young turk Sayantan after arriving in the city this morning even as shutterbugs and reporters hounded the duo. Officials of the Alekhine Chess Club and the All India Chess Federation (AICF) welcomed the two players upon their arrival and they were escorted to Gorky Sadan, where a gala felicitation function was held to honour Sayantan and Diptayan. Fittingly, the venue is where the two chess whiz kids grew up picking up the strings under the watchful eyes of the instructors of the Goodricke National Chess Academy (GNCA).

Sayantan and Diptayan came up with their stellar performances in Vietnam just two days after Anand saw off the challenge from Kramnik to reign supreme in Bonn in the matchplay format. Unfortunately for the two Kolkata masters, their exploits have been overshadowed to an extent by Anand’s world champion effort.

Sayantan, who impressed with his world championship title win in the Under-12 circuit, recalled the Vietnam experience, which lasted two weeks. “The main reason why I won is simply the preparation factor. I was very well prepared for this event, that’s why I was confident of making it to the top three standings there, and thankfully, I topped,” Sayantan said. “It was after losing to Ian Darwin of the US — my only defeat there — that I took it upon myself to bring home the title. In the 10th round, I knew that I was right on track.”

Sayantan, who was accompanied on the trip to Vietnam by his coach and guardian International Master Saptarshi Ray, has now set his eyes on earning the International Master norm.

Interestingly, much of Sayantan’s homework was done from Kolkata by his advisor Niladri Bhattacharya, who coordinated with Saptarshi over the internet and passed on valuable suggestions to the kid en route to the title win.

The organisers of today’s felicitation programme handed over a cheque worth Rs 50,000 to Sayantan and silver salvers to both. Diptayan, meanwhile, has already been gifted with a laptop by the organisers of the Youth Chess Championship in Vietnam.

The GNCA has been organising an annual school chess event in the city which has grown quite popular in no time. And its products are grandmasters Surya Sekhar Ganguly, Sandipan Chanda, Neelotpal Das, and then women grandmasters Nisha Mohota, Mary Ann Gomes. Then there are international master Sankar Roy, Arghyadip Das, Saptarshi Roy and many others.

Grandmaster Sandipan Chanda, who hails from the same city, expressed his joy over Sayantan and Diptayan’s achievements in Vietnam. “From now on, I will help them in whichever way possible, whenever I am free. I couldn’t receive any gold medal in any world event as a kid, but they did it. They should continue the hard work and should get to play in different world events,” Chanda said.