World Chess Champion Dommaraju Gukesh visited the iconic M A Chidambaram Stadium at Chepauk in Chennai as part of Chennai Super star programme ahead of IPL 2025. The Chennai Super Kings shared a teaser which also featured former India cricketer Ravichandran Ashwin.
In the video D Gukesh can be seen entering the stadium and meeting R Ashwin. The off spinner presented the youngster with CSK jersey with no 18 and his name written on the back. Ashwin also invited Gukesh for a game of chess after which both of them gave their autograph on Chess Board. The video is all set to be released soon.
CSK captioned the video, " World champion of chess! A Chennai paiyan at heart! A sparring with Ashwin! Introducing Chennai Superstars! Get set to meet Gukesh and his love for the city! Coming Soon!"
Viswanathan Anand praises Gukesh for promoting chess
India's chess legend Viswanathan Anand is glad that recently crowned World Chess Champion D Gukesh is doing a lot of promotional events in India. The five-time world champion said it was important to endorse the responsibility of promoting the game, which comes with winning the title and is happy that Gukesh was doing it.
He said, "You cannot neglect the public side of things. You cannot say, ' I want chess to be more popular,' and then when it is, you cannot just hide. It's one or the other, so you have to spend some time doing these public events. They are also important and will help chess and keep it in the public eye. So it is good he (Gukesh) is doing it."
R Ashwin shared though on rejoining CSK
Ashwin expressed his feelings about rejoining the franchise where he began his IPL journey. CSK shared a video on social media In which Ashwin says, "It feels very odd actually, it has been many years since I left, I am coming back to the same team, all the people are the same, every day I used to practice vigorously for the season. CSK bought Ashwin for ₹9.75 crore in the mega auction
