Savitha Shri during the Chess Olympiad at Samarkand on Monday. (Rafal Oleksiewicz/FIDE)The Indian women’s Olympiad team bounced back from a defeat to Poland in the fifth round with a solid victory over the fifth-seeded US team, thanks to the form of their bottom two board players, Savitha Shri and Vantika Agrawal. The victory keeps their medal chances alive and also keeps the door ajar on them being in the frame for a gold medal, just like they did in Budapest.While India decided to rest Vaishali against the US after her loss on Sunday, Divya Deshmukh and Koneru Humpy took draws in the sixth round. India won the tie thanks to Savitha prevailing over Rose Atwell in 47 moves and Vantika defeating Grandmaster Irina Krush.Both International Masters have had a great Olympiad for India, emerging as a reliable backbone of the team. While Vantika has had one draw in the five games she has played, 19-year-old Savitha — playing in her first over-the-board Olympiad for India — has won all five games. Incidentally, in the only contest in which the team decided she should rest, India suffered a defeat against Poland. Savitha’s five wins also mean she’s India’s best player in terms of form in Samarkand across the two Indian teams.“I was a little nervous coming into this round because we had lost to Poland yesterday, and if something went wrong, there would be no chance of us winning a medal,” Savitha said on the ChessBase India live stream after her win. Savitha’s five wins also mean she’s India’s best player in terms of form in Samarkand across the two Indian teams. (Rafal Oleksiewicz/FIDE)Grandmaster Arjun Kalyan, a coach with the women’s team, had also appeared on the same stream earlier in the day, and it was apparent that the defeat to Poland was very much the elephant in the room for the team coming into the game. Kalyan said the loss in the previous round was a blow, but the team drew on their past experiences.Also Read | Israel’s Olympiad matches rescheduled as Singapore, Colombia agree to early start for Yom Kippur“We had lost to them at the Olympiad twice before. We took it as a positive that last year, despite the defeat, we went on to win gold,” Kalyan said.The Indian team has sterner tests lying in wait over the next five rounds, with sides like Georgia (seeded second), Kazakhstan (third) and China (fourth) among those they could potentially face. But the form of Savitha and Vantika, coupled with the experience of bouncing back from setbacks in previous campaigns, gives India hope that they can remain in the medal hunt and still try their luck at a gold medal chase.Amit Kamath is Assistant Editor at The Indian Express and is based in Mumbai. He primarily writes on chess and Olympic sports, and co-hosts the Game Time podcast, a weekly offering from Express Sports. He also writes a weekly chess column, On The Moves. ... Read More Tags:Chess Olympiad