British politician and former Prime Minister of Britain, Rishi Sunak went to X to congratulate 11-year-old Bodhan Shivanandan of Indian origin on April 3, 2026. Sivanandan, who hails from Harrow, recently became England’s top female chess player.“Many congratulations to Bodhana Sivanandan on becoming England’s top female chess player at the age of just 11.” He has written. “We once played with each other in Downing Street Gardens,” he said, adding that Sivanandan’s success has not come as a shock.
Who is Bodhan Shivanandan?
Bodhana Sivanandan was born on 7 March 2015 in London, her parents relocated to the United Kingdom from Tiruchirappalli in 2007. She has recently been ranked 72nd in the International Chess Federation’s global women’s rankings. She is England’s top-rated women’s player, with a rating of 2,366. By securing this position, the teenager replaced 25-year-old Lan Yao, who previously held the position.Sivanandan was only five years old when she fell in love with sports. It was during the pandemic that he found a chessboard from his father, which he planned to donate. “I said it was a game, but she didn’t believe me, so I had to put up a YouTube video to explain. Then she asked about the rules – I just knew the very basics,” her father, an IT professional, told The Times. “Gradually her interest grew and she started playing better, so we kept playing chess more and more.”At the age of seven, Sivanandan attended the European Schools Championships in 2022 and won all 24 of her matches and went home with three gold medals. In 2023, when her rating exceeded 2,000, she received an official FIDE title, the first female Candidate Master title. In 2024, when she was selected for the Chess Olympiad in Hungary, she set a record by becoming the youngest person to represent England in any sport. A year later, she became the youngest female player to defeat a grandmaster when she defeated 60-year-old Peter Wells at the British Chess Championships in Liverpool in August 2025.Currently a sixth-year student, she hopes to become the youngest grandmaster in history. However, Sivandan follows in the line of British chess prodigies to move forward in the board game world. Shreyas Royal became the youngest UK Grandmaster in 2024 at the age of 15 and Suprait Banerjee, 12, was recently promoted to the rank of Master.
