Anand shows his displeasure, hits out at Kasparov

We have rarely seen Viswanathan Anand show his displeasure in public, but in a rare display of irritation, Viswanathan Anand, who won his fifth world title on Wednesday, hit out at chess great Garry Kasparov and other critics for suggesting that he lacked motivation, says a report in Hindustan Times.


“I think that this is the first time I have played a match where so many people seemed to have negative opinion about my play. And the thing is I do not think I lacked motivation,” Anand said about his clash with Boris Gelfand, whom he beat to win his fifth world title.

The 42-year-old Anand told a TV channel from Moscow that Kasparov “keeps talking about my age” but Gelfand was slightly older at 44. “(Not only Kasparov), there were many people also parroting what he was saying,” Anand said.

“He (Kasparov) keeps talking about my age but I could just as well say Boris is even slightly older. I think the problem is all the people who started out assuming that I was the heavy favourite in this match were reluctant to admit that their prognosis was wrong,” Anand said.

Anand added he never considered himself as the favourite and knew that Gelfand would be a tough opponent. “I never saw myself as the favourite… I knew Gelfand would be a very, very difficult opponent. And looking at his recent plays, I understood that this is how the match would go. And, so, I never felt I had to answer after every game ‘what was going wrong?’ because nothing was going wrong.