Coaching fast, nod to MS Dhoni and ‘funniest’ team: GCL 2026 Inside Ganges Grandmasters title

Ganga Grandmasters Become GCL 2026 Champions BENGALURU: Who doesn’t love a good underdog story? Everyone does it, right? When the Global Chess League (GCL) season 4 started in Bengaluru less than a fortnight ago, none of the Ganga grandmasters had an upper hand. Six teams, the league stage so tight and the final decided only after the last game played on Saturday night.With grandmasters like Ian Nepomniachtchi, Levon Aronian, Leinier Domínguez and Leon Luke Mendonca and international champions like Polina Shuvalova and Stavroula Tsolakida, it was a diverse side few expected to go all the way.When the confetti cannons went off on Sunday, it was grandmasters Gang, not defending APL champions Pipers, and Magnus Carlsen’s Icon board team, who stood atop the podium.7-5 remained the overall score which saw Grandmasters Gang defeat Pipers in a two-round final, tying the first game 3-3 where Grandmasters played with white pieces.However, with black, Ian Nepomniachtchi pounced on a positional error from Carlsen and refused to give the world number one any way back into the game. And as the five-time world champion’s position crumbled, so did the Pipers’ hopes of retaining the title. Behind the scenes, however, the triumph is about much more than just a good underdog story.

‘Not a full-time coach’ at the helm

Adhiban Baskaran, who, as all the players in the squad acknowledged, played an integral role in holding it all together throughout the campaign, is not the coach.“I’m not a full-time coach, so I wanted to clarify that. I’m like a professional player,” the 34-year-old grandmaster told reporters on Sunday. “But this time I was free. I didn’t have any tournaments in September, so I wanted to be part of something great.”That “something great” turned into a first GCL title on his debut as a coach, which Baskaran still looked mildly overwhelmed by.“To win season 4 of the GCL on debut is amazing and I’m very proud,” he added.His version of the story is worth telling, not tactics or matchmaking. Just what he brought to the dungeon had nothing to do with chess at all.His humor, superstition and level of emotional investment lifted the team’s overall spirits after a thrilling start to the tournament, including two wins and two losses in the opening four games.Take a nickname for example. Somewhere along the way, Baskaran started handing out nicknames to the team, and one of them nevertheless became more popular than the others.Earlier in the tournament, Greek chess player Stavroula Tsolakidou revealed that Baskaran prepared her for the game with an ensemble called “Preparation for the Greek Goddess!”.“I was trying to come up with nicknames for everyone, so I came up with this nickname, Greek Goddess,” he said. It became the name that was eventually shouted around the venue by the time she secured a sealing victory over Koneru Humpy and collected the Player of the Tournament award, complete with Jawa bike.“I didn’t expect it to become so popular in such a short time,” Baskaran admitted.Then there was fasting. After losing midway through the tournament, Baskaran made a silent promise to himself.“I didn’t have breakfast, I didn’t have lunch, and I thought to myself that if the team doesn’t win, I won’t even have dinner,” he said with a smile after Sunday’s victory. “And they won. So I could actually have dinner.”What started as a one-time superstition turned into a five-day ritual.“I thought, well, why fix something that isn’t broken? So I started fasting every lunch. I didn’t have lunch for the last five days, also thinking that if the team didn’t win, I wouldn’t have dinner. But luckily, my team always won and they helped me, so at least I could have dinner,” he revealed.By the end of the tournament, he was only half-joking about the toll it had taken. “My stomach is literally crying right now,” he noted.

An accidental nod to MS Dhoni

Baskaran’s basement calm turned out to have a specific origin, arriving via a text message from his father amid a rocky start to the season.“After the second day, I think we lost one match,” Baskaran recalled. “And my father sent me this message, you know you’re just trying to be like one of your role models, Dhoni. He said, ‘Try to be like Captain Cool, your role model.’ So I was like, yeah, I’m going to try to be like that.”“I actually chose my (shirt) number seven for Ronaldo,” he said. “But actually Dhoni’s number is also seven. So there is one joke about Dhoni; the credit always goes back to Dhoni.”Baskaran, pressed on whether the same reflexive credit-giving that cricketer Hardik Pandya once attributed India’s victory to Dhoni’s mere presence in the dressing room, brushed aside the comparison altogether.“No, no. Here I feel it’s because of my team,” he added. “I think they played very well.Whatever the jersey number said, Baskaran’s kick-off remained visibly, purposefully calm until he had the trophy to celebrate.

A childhood hero, now a champion teammate

Baskaran admits that the real reason he chose to coach the GCL outfit in his time off had little to do with money, fame or anything material.“Levon (Aronian) has been my hero for as long as I can remember,” revealed Baskaran. “I have been a big fan of him ever since he won the World Junior in Goa. Getting to train with him, rather than just admiring him from afar, was its own reward. “Understanding how the players are doing, the psychology, how they prepare, that’s something I really wanted to know. So that was why I wanted to be a part of this team.”For his part, Aronian returned the favor by asking him directly about Baskaran.“He’s such a friendly, such a calm and pleasant person,” Aronian said after the trophy celebration. “I’ve known him since he was very young, even our fathers are friends.During the tournament, it didn’t look like a group of mercenaries assembled for the tournament, as Aronian also confirmed.“I think we have very relaxed egos, less structure in the team and everyone can have fun. There are no limits to the jokes. I just felt like it was a family experience. I will cherish those days,” admitted the grandmaster.The Russian grandmaster and iconic Nepomniachtchi player whose demolition of Carlsen effectively won the title echoed the same sentiment from a very different starting point, a player who admitted he arrived in Bengaluru unsure of his own form after a tough year of ratings losses.“I wasn’t sure what form I was in at the moment,” he said. “But I was really pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere within the team. Despite the different ages, different cultures, we really found points of connection. It was always very healthy, very funny. I think that really made the difference.”

The ‘funniest team’ wins in the end

After a grueling round of matches in the GCL, Gang of Grandmasters players can often be seen on social media paying homage to physical sports such as padel, golf and basketball. Maybe it built team spirit.“I think it’s more about team spirit,” Adhiban said. “We’re always joking, we’re always having fun, I’d actually say we’re the funniest team. Maybe that’s one of the reasons.”No one had Ganga Grandmasters between the top two.On Sunday night, the highlight belonged to the man who led the underdogs, now holding the trophy, still fasting and still cracking jokes in the GCL’s fourth-year “funniest team.”