Yuzvendra Chahal - The only Indian to represent the nation in chess and cricket

In the official FIDE website, you can still find . He is one of the few Indians with a FIDE rating above 1900 (1956 to be exact) and still holds a ranking of 1697 in the nation. The checkered board was his first love, however, lack of sponsors, like most of the sports which are not cricket in India, forced him to give up on his chess career.

"I became an under-12 champion in the 16th national children’s chess championship held in Kolkata in 2002,” he said. “I wanted to grow up to become a chess player and in the next year I got to represent India in the Asian Youth Chess Championships in the under-12 event. The tournament was held in Kozhikode and I ended up between 13-18 positions.

“Then I went on to participate in the World Youth Championships in Halkidiki, Greece but finished 67th. So I wanted to get more training to play chess as I learned chess through a computer. I knew that to progress further in chess and get good training, I would need at least Rs 500,000 a year and I tried my best to get sponsors but couldn’t so I gave up chess,” Chahal had said previously in an interview with the Gulf news.

Thankfully for him, he was good in cricket as well. The 26-year-old got his breakthrough in the IPL with the Mumbai Indians, before finishing as the second highest wicket-taker in the 2016 IPL with his new franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore.

His three ODIs and six T20Is-old international career is off to a promising start. In the last T20I, he became the second bowler in the world after Ajantha Mendis to pick up six wickets in a T20I game. However, things could have been so different for Popeye had he received that chess sponsorship back then.