“When You Really Want to Win, You Win More”- IM Vantika Agrawal
Vantika was part of the women's team comprising Harika Dronavalli, R Vaishali, Divya Deshmukh, and Tania Sachdev, which won gold at the 45th FIDE Chess Olympiad .
Team India put up scintillating performances to finish unbeaten in the South Asian qualifiers defeating Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal and secured their berth at the Asian Championships LAN Finals slated to be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from July 10-17, .
The Indian team comprising skipper Manav Kunte (mnz), Vishal Vernekar (HBK), Abhishek Yadav (Abhi-), Shahbaz Hussain (PinkMaN), Krish Gupta (Krish`), and substitute Jaikishan Malik (KaEL) got off to the best possible start after effortlessly defeating Pakistan by 54-12 and Sri Lanka by 39-14 on the opening day. The team further extended their domination to beat Nepal by 47-24 and Bangladesh by 40-16 on Day 2 in the best-of-one matches.
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Going up against Nepal in the best-of-three finals, Team India was at the top of its game and secured comprehensive victories in the first two rounds by 34-27 and 36-34 to emerge as the champions of South Asian qualifiers and become the only team from the region to qualify for Asian qualifiers.
Commenting after securing the qualification, Manav Kunte said , “We came into the South Asian qualifiers with the goal of proving ourselves in the region and we are proud to have achieved that. Defeating all the teams from the region with stunning performances and securing our spot in the Asian Championship is a testament to the hard work, dedication, and unity of our team. We are now ready to face the best teams in Asia, and earn the spot to represent India at the 15th World Esports Championships.”
The team qualified for the South Asian qualifiers by defeating Team Mob in the finals of the National Esports Championships (NESC) 2023, conducted by the Esports Federation of India (ESFI) earlier this year. The squad’s prominent players Vishal and Abhishek were also part of the historic DOTA 2 team that won the bronze medal at the Commonwealth Esports Championships in 2022.
They will now be competing against the leading DOTA 2 teams Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Mongolia, Australia, Jordan, Myanmar, and Saudi Arabia to qualify for the 15th World Esports Championships (WEC) in Iasi from August 24 – September 4, 2023.
Following the DOTA 2 team’s qualification, India ensured a flawless performance at the South Asian regionals with the country’s CS:GO male and female teams also making their way to the Asian Championship with stellar displays.
The country’s well-renowned Tekken 7 professional Abhinav Tejan and eFootball athlete Ibrahim Gulrez have already secured their qualification at the 15th WEC that has a whopping prize pool of $500,000 (INR 4.12 crore), and is set to be the largest edition of the tournament to date with at least 130 countries participating in eFootball, DOTA 2, Tekken7, Mobile Legends, PUBG: Mobile and CS:GO.
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