New Delhi, Feb. 8 -- In sports writing, "talent" is a frequently used term. Its usage is also fairly ambiguous. Anyone who plays a sport at a competitive level or plays music professionally, for example, would presumably be "talented" in it.

In sports writing, it is often used for athletes who enter the limelight at an early age or display abilities that are pleasing to the eye, like a Sachin Tendulkar in cricket or a Roger Federer in tennis. It could be a coincidence that two concurrent books on the subject of chess have a similar opinion to the use of the word "talent".

"People call you talented when they don't see you as a real threat," writes Viswanathan Anand in the Lightning Kid: 64 Winning Lessons from the Boy Who Became Five-Tim...