Pratitee Bordoloi becomes India’s lone medallist at World Youth Chess

NEW DELHI: Last week, 13-year-old Woman FIDE Master (WFM) Pratitee Bordoloi created history for India in Montesilvano, Italy. Competing at the FIDE World Youth Chess Championship 2026, the Bengaluru-based youngster clinched the silver medal in the Girls Under-18 category.Entering as the 16th seed with a FIDE rating of 2129, the Shishya BEML Public School student produced a sensational unbeaten campaign, scoring 9 points out of 11 rounds against players up to five years older than herself.India fielded 13 players across six sections, but Pratitee returned home as the country’s sole medallist, securing her first WIM norm and gaining over 129 Elo rating points. Behind this historic podium finish lies a fascinating duality and perhaps a story of a quiet, introverted teenager who treats chess endings like mathematical equations, balances all arrays of life, and shares an uncanny birthday with a chess legend.

The Kasparov connection

Pratitee was born on April 13, 2013, exactly 50 years after the legendary Garry Kasparov, who was born on April 13, 1963. Beyond the shared birthday, her coach, Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay, notices distinct tactical similarities.“Some of the traits I see. Even in a bad condition in a tournament where she’s lagging behind a point or something, she plans it well to try to beat so that she can do at the top,” Thipsay told TimesofIndia.com during an exclusive interaction.

Six-time World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov

However, Thipsay stresses that Pratitee is far from a one-dimensional athlete, adding, “Pratitee is not completely a chess player. She’s a mathematical wizard, and she comes first in all the exams.”Her mother, Pranti Dutta Bordoloi, recalls how her daughter’s journey unfolded organically during the COVID-19 pandemic.Without rigorous formal training, a 9-year-old Pratitee shocked everyone by winning the 2022 Karnataka State Championship, followed by the National Under-9 title in Indore six months later.“She was still very good at calculations, at maths,” Pranti told this website. “She used to give Maths Olympiad from grade one and won a gold medal in the SOF IMO. That time only I thought that she should be good at chess also, since she’s good at Maths Olympiad.”Despite her rapid rise, her family remains deeply committed to a grounded life. “Honestly speaking, we are not that kind of person that, ‘leave everything behind for chess only.’ Our first preference is always studies. Not at the cost of study, because ultimately you have to be educated, otherwise life will not be balanced.”

Focus on independent thinking

“Compared to her age group, she’s much more mature as a person, and the logic base is very high,” Thipsay noted. “If you tell her something is good or not good, she’s not going to accept it blindly. She questions till she is satisfied, and that perseverance is very important.”This analytical mindset makes her a rare commodity in junior chess. “She’s one of the few players who is not bored with studying endings or finding out the accurate moves because she finds it very logic-based. Mathematically, she’s very sound,” the veteran Grandmaster added.During the World Cadet Cup last year, where Pratitee secured gold in the Under-12 Girls category, she established a unique system with Thipsay. She preferred resting immediately after her matches, waiting until the tournament pairings were published late at night.

Pratitee Bordoloi’s current coach Pravin Thipsay (PTI Photo)

“After the pairing was out, which is about nine o’clock there, which means 10:30 p.m. by Indian time, she would say, ‘I want to have a one-hour class or one and a half hours class,’ and we used to study,” Thipsay revealed. “She’s so thorough in the preparation… she wants to learn everything about a position.”This hyper-focus allows her to think independently on the board. “Dr. Lasker (Emanuel Lasker) said that the duty of a trainer is to teach the pupils to think independently. She has that capacity,” said Thipsay.

Keeping the pieces grounded

Despite the growing spotlight, Pratitee maintains strict personal discipline, balancing a 9-to-10-hour sleep cycle with physical training using a punching bag and cycling.With her mother holding a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Christ University and her father working at a leading IT company, Pratitee has been raised to ensure that competitive ruthlessness remains confined to the chessboard.

Pratitee Bordoloi at FIDE Youth Chess Championship (Special Arrangements)

“I always used to tell her that if you also won, just don’t show your happiness in front of your opponent because she must be feeling very horrible at that time,” Pranti shared.ALSO READ: The making of India’s 97th Chess Grandmaster Harshavardhan GB: A ‘legend’ among friends, now his parents’ prideDuring a recent media interaction, the 13-year-old was asked about her future. “She gave two answers,” her mother recalled proudly. “One was, ‘I want to be a world champion.’ And the second time she said beautifully, ‘I just want to play well.’”

Molde FK have announced that Nigerian midfielder Daniel Daga has won his appeal after the Frostating Court of Appeal acquitted him of the sexual assault allegations that kept him out of action for 11 months.

In a statement released on Thursday, July 2, 2026, the Norwegian club confirmed that the 19-year-old is now available for selection again as they await the final judgment in the case.

Daga, a former Nigeria U20 international, had been sidelined by Molde since legal proceedings began against him.

The midfielder was previously sentenced to six months in prison by the Romsdal District Court after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman. The court also ordered him to pay NOK 10,000 in legal costs.

The incident was said to have taken place in April 2025, while charges were officially filed on December 19, 2025.

Following the earlier ruling, Daga’s lawyer, Astrid Bolstad, maintained that her client was innocent and insisted that the encounter had been consensual. She immediately announced plans to appeal the verdict.

“He is terribly sorry that the verdict was the way it was,” Bolstad said at the time. “He believes he is innocent and that everything happened with consent.”

After the initial conviction, Molde FK removed Daga from first-team activities, stating that he would not be considered for selection while the legal process continued.

With the Court of Appeal now overturning the conviction and acquitting the Nigerian midfielder, Daga is set to return to action for Molde after nearly a year away from competitive football.

Arccos has become a valuable asset to golfers everywhere to help them learn more about their own game, but the company is actually helping OEMs develop new golf clubs too.

On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, Arccos CEO Sal Syed explained how the company has relationships with almost every OEM to use their data and explained some of the examples to co-host Jake Morrow.

Syed mentioned Ping has used Arccos data for multiple club development and fitting applications.

“This is something that they have talked about, so I can talk about it. For the last 400 years or so, golf gapping, the iron gapping has been linear,” Syed said. “But what they realized was for the improvement player, for a mid-handicap player, linear gapping doesn’t need linear loft gapping, so the four-degree or four-and-a-half degree, whatever the difference is, doesn’t actually lead to linear differences in distance on the course.

“Now they have a non-linear proprietary gapping algorithm that they have based on Arccos data, so that was a fundamental change that had been based on real-world data.”

Arccos data was also able to show Ping that players were using their wedges more from the rough than the fairway, which encouraged designers to change the grind and bounce options and tailor them more for play out of the long grass.

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Morrow brought up the example of the G440 hybrid’s progressive face angle design by loft.

“They looked into every bag of players that were playing hybrids, or Ping hybrids specifically, and there was basically nobody playing a 2-hybrid and a 5-hybrid,” Morrow said. “So they said, why are we trying to build these the same? This 2-hybrid is for this guy, this 5-hybrid is for this set of players. And I thought that that was just such a unique way to use data.”

For more from Morrow and Syed, listen to the full episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped here, or watch it below.

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Portugal paid a touching tribute to Diogo Jota at the end of their remarkable World Cup victory against Croatia.

It is a year since Jota, while a Liverpool player, died in a car accident in Spain, 11 days after marrying his long-term partner Rute Cardoso.

His brother Andre Silva was also killed in the accident on 3 July 2025.

At the end of Portugal’s drama-filled 2-1 win to set up a last-16 tie against Spain, Cristiano Ronaldo put on a special ’21’ shirt in Jota’s memory before the squad came together with the shirt held aloft.

Before the game, towards the end of Portugal’s national anthem, Jota’s picture appeared on the big screen in Toronto, and was greeted with a loud cheer from the supporters.

Ronaldo also appeared emotional as the cameras focused on him, having played with Jota 32 times for their country.

“Diogo is our sun and our light,” said Portugal manager Roberto Martinez before the match, having named Jota as an honorary ‘plus-one’ player when he announced his squad in May.

“We want to win the World Cup for him.”

Jota, 28, was on his way back to Liverpool for pre-season when the car, a Lamborghini, left the road because of a tyre blowout while overtaking another vehicle.

He was making the journey to England by car and ferry as doctors had advised the forward, who celebrated winning the Premier League title two months earlier, against flying because he had undergone minor surgery.

“I still talk to him,” Ruben Neves said about Jota, his close friend and former Porto, Wolves and Portugal team-mate, in the build-up to the match.

“We have a WhatsApp group with Rute and Diogo, and it’s still there, and we continue to talk there,” he told Portuguese TV show, external Alta Definicao.

“Whenever something special happens, I have the conversations archived on my WhatsApp so I can continue to send him messages.”

Belatedly, Roberto Martinez was stirred out of his slumber. A manager who can look smilingly passive was facing the end: of Portugal’s World Cup, perhaps of his reign, too. Portugal’s perplexing first half had brought 69 per cent of possession and a lone shot on target.

Then they trailed and Martinez showed a decisiveness he is often accused of lacking. A quadruple change altered the momentum, the World Cup. One of the arrivals, Goncalo Ramos, was to prove the man who did something many an opponent has failed to accomplish in the last two World Cups and finish off Croatia.

But Martinez’s later, and final, change was his most instructive, perhaps his most influential.

There was some disbelief when the number went up: seven. The seven of Cristiano Ronaldo, the man who played every minute in the group stage, who survived when Bruno Fernandes and Vitinha went off in the cull of the quartet, who had, 20 years on, finally scored in a World Cup knockout game.

But with a passenger up front, Portugal were being outrun in midfield. And so off went Ronaldo, on came Ruben Neves and Ramos, who had been brought on as a No 10, was relocated to lead the line.

So there he was when Rafael Leao whipped in the most enticing of crosses, meeting it with a superb header. A 94th-minute winner was a goal that may be savoured in San Siro: Ramos has become AC Milan’s record signing and will join Leao there. But this, really, is his stage, the World Cup knockout rounds. He got a hat-trick against Switzerland in the last 16 in 2022, displacing Ronaldo from the starting 11. Now he is back on the bench, but back in the goals.

But this has seemed Croatia’s stage, too, the World Cup knockout rounds. The team who never know when they are beaten thought they weren’t beaten. Josko Gvardiol bundled in what seemed a 103rd-minute equaliser. But Igor Matanovic got the faintest of flick-ons to Mario Pasalic, rendering the latter offside before he found Gvardiol.

And so one legend reached the end of the road in World Cups: not Ronaldo but the magnificent Luka Modric. For him and Croatia alike, it was a valiant way to say goodbye. Never write off the Germans, the saying used to go; never write off these Croatians. They transformed this game, a sterile first half giving way to a stunning second. Toronto bade farewell to the World Cup with epic drama, Croatia with a sense of what might have been.

Ronaldo was neither the first nor the only old-timer on the scoresheet. Ivan Perisic found the net in the 2018 final; at 37, winning his 158th cap, he got forward from left back to add another. Josip Stanisic stood up a cross, which was flicked on to Perisic. Free at the far post, he took two touches. The third was angled past Diogo Costa.

Croatia can wonder how they did not score another. The unusually dynamic Mateo Kovacic kept driving forward; Costa denied him a goal just after the interval, the woodwork repelled a drive after 75 minutes. Petar Sucic had two goals disallowed for offside. There could have been an 89th-minute winner, Pasalic heading just wide.

Portugal’s defence creaked but their goalkeeper, Costa, was defiant. They received a jolt when they went behind. They had sterile domination before the break: Dominik Livakovic made a fine third-minute save from Fernandes, and Renato Veiga headed just wide. Otherwise, they accomplished little.

Going behind galvanised Portugal. Leao curled a shot against the bar. Ronaldo took a delectable touch and lobbed Livakovic, but the reason his 41-year-old legs were behind the Croatia defence was that he was offside. He soon had his goal anyway.

When Veiga was rugby-tackled in the box by Nikola Vlasic, the Portugal bench – the substituted quartet included – implored referee Espen Eskas to go to the monitor. He pointed to the spot. Ronaldo’s penalty was terrific; cathartic, too. Perhaps it was vindication for Martinez keeping him on initially. It was nevertheless ridiculous when Fifa named Ronaldo the man of the match.

There were times when the veteran had felt like the footballing answer to the CN Tower: immediately identifiable in the Toronto skyline but unlikely to move. But he had to trudge to the sidelines when substituted.

Yet whereas the accusation is that Ronaldo can behave as if it is all about him, there was an unselfishness at the end. Ronaldo was in tears, the shirt he was brandishing not the number he has worn for most of a career that has now yielded 146 international goals, but the 21 of the late Diogo Jota.

Portugal posed afterwards, the entire squad and staff around the late forward’s shirt. This is a team with a greater cause. And now they can carry their bid to honour Jota into a clash with Martinez’s native Spain in Dallas.

The last the World Cup will see of Ronaldo was not him being substituted in Toronto. For Modric, though, an epic journey is over.

Jaylen Brown has been at the center of the NBA world since the Boston Celtics traded him to the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday. The Celtics received veteran star Paul George, two future first-round draft picks and two future second-round draft picks.

Since the deal, it has also been reported that Brown has “fallen out of favor” with the Celtics organization. On Thursday, there were reports from famed NBA commentator Colin Cowherd that the five-time All-Star believes he’s the smartest person in every room. Cowherd revealed it on “The Colin Cowherd Podcast” and claimed that he had two NBA sources confirm it.

“I had two NBA sources … two people in the league, one an executive, one a scout, say that Jaylen Brown has — it’s a disease. He suddenly thinks he’s the smartest guy in every room he’s in … You make a lot of money, suddenly you’re absolutely sure, you don’t wanna listen to your bosses, you don’t wanna listen to consultants, you don’t wanna listen to teammates,” Cowherd said.

Cleveland Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell quickly shut down Cowherd’s claims about his on-court rival and off-court friend. Mitchell blasted the report on X about the criticism of Brown.

“Critique basketball all you want… but disease is insane… we gotta stop letting people just say whatever… cmon man!” Mitchell posted.

While Jaylen Brown is one of the most talented players in the league, he’s widely recognized as highly intelligent. Among his many noteworthy academic and intellectual achievements is the fact that, at the age of 22, he was the youngest lecturer at Harvard University. The former Celtics star spoke about leadership and education.

He also took a master’s-level class in Cultural Studies of Sport in Education while a freshman at UC Berkley. He also received a NASA internship offer and collaborations with MIT.

Isaiah Thomas Stood Up for Jaylen Brown Online

Since the deal was announced, there has been considerable criticism regarding Jaylen Brown. Isaiah Thomas, a former teammate, said that anyone may criticize Brown’s style of play. However, he doesn’t tolerate the comments made about his personality.

“It’s so nasty all the NEGATIVE things I’m seeing people say about Jaylen Brown!!! I don’t care how yall talk about bros game, it’s all opinion based anyway! Please stay away from talking about the PERSON and his character!!!! He’s real as they come! Don’t get it twisted people,” Thomas wrote.

Thomas and Brown were teammates with the Celtics for one season, when the latter was still a rookie in the NBA. Although they only spent one year together, they have mutual respect.

Brown also considers Thomas a mentor after his productive years in Boston.