‘Idea was to prepare Gukesh so that there would be no surprises’
Hindustan TimesMumbai: Paddy Upton described a scenario he played “over a hundred times” in his head as he flew from South Africa to Singapore. They would embrace, and Upton would tell him, “You deserve this.” “It was uncanny that the movie I played in my head played out exactly in real life as I’d imagined,” Upton tells HT over the phone, reflecting on his first-ever meeting with Gukesh, who beat China’s Ding Liren to become world champion last week. He worked with the Indian men’s cricket team that won the 2011 ICC World Cup, as well as the men’s hockey team that won bronze at the Paris Olympics in September. We all spend most of our time thinking, but Gukesh has a remarkable ability to know what he’s thinking about. Now, having worked with him a lot through IPLs and Indian cricket, I’ve seen his approach has not changed, even beyond his cricket playing years.