Football Fever

So, here I am, back again after quite some time and yes, it was the football fever that has caught everyone which prompted this comeback.

Since the days I started reading newspaper, in the early 1950s, football had been a thrilling experience – experience, though only through the excellently written reports about number of tournaments that used to happen in Kerala. There was Chakola’s Gold trophy tournament in Thrissur, there was Sait Nagjee Memorial tournament in Kozhikode, Santhosh Trophy tournament, GV Raja cup in Trivandrum, to name a few.

We used to read about legends even in those days, players like Sanjiva the goalkeeper, Mewalal, Manna, Pappan etc. We could not actually see the matches, but because of thepowerful reports, could imagine and see in our mind the fantastic goals being scored by Nevil D’Souza, Chuni Goswami, P K Banerjee, Cidanandan and number of others. We could see in our mind how Jarnail Singh or Sathyan stands like a rock in defence and at the same time, feed the ball to the forwards. Also, we could see the brilliant saves in the goal by Thangaraj, Narayanan or Mustafa.

In the Chakolas and Sait Nagjee tournaments many famous clubs in India at that time participated.   Lucky Stars, Spirited Youth and Brothers Club from Kannur, Mohun Bagan, East Bengal, Rajasthan club and Mohammedan Sporting from Calcutta, I think one or two clubs from Mumbai etc. to name a few. In the Santosh trophy, apart from different states, Services and Railways participated. Air India, Indian Navy etc. had their own football clubs. There were also other tournaments like Mumbai had Rovers cup, and Kolkata IFA shield, Delhi had Durand cup and DCM tournament etc.

In short, 40s, 50s and 60s were probably the golden era of Indian football. In 1950, India did not play in World Cup in spite of having been qualified. (I remember how disturbing it was to our young minds). India played in next Olympics in 1952, where they got a real drubbing. But over this decade, India did win some tournaments in Asia, became runner up in some and became fourth in 1956 olympics, where Neville D’Souza scored a Hat-trick. The detailed reports about these feats used to really elevate our spirits.

In mid-50s, one of our neighbour bought a radio and this opened up a new avenue – the running commentary. So, we used to listen to the running commentary of many matches and then the next day, we used to read the reports. The reports were so elaborate and exhaustive.

Talking about exhaustive reports, that classic ‘Sanjayan’ wrote, a humorous report about an imaginary match, which was hilarious.

Later when I went to study in Kannur polytechnic, I could meet a few of these players – Mustafa, the goalkeeper and Chidanandan to name a couple of them – in Police maidan doing practice games. In fact one of our polytechnic students, Venu, used to play for Spirited youth club.

Again a few years later, when I had started working, I had an occasion to go to Kolkata to meet one of our suppliers. It was about 10.30 in the morning and  as I was about to get to the office, the guard stopped me and said, ‘Sir, no one has come today.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Sir, today there is a match between East Bengal and Mohun Bagan. They have all gone to stand in the queue to buy tickets.’

‘Why didn’t you go?’

‘Someone has to be here to take care of the office, no? Since I am the chosen one for this, the others will buy me a free ticket’. Well, that is not a bad bargain.....

Many matches of last two world cups, I had watched on a big screen in an open foodcourt in Batam, Indonesia. With so many number of people watching, the atmosphere used to be as electric as could be in a stadium.

As I was watching the Brazil-Croatia match last night, this lazy chair took me back to all those early years of my life as a football fan – through a stream of nostalgic memories.