Eternal India Encyclopedia

encyclopedia Eternal India

SPORTS

junior national tournament; and the Sir Iqbal Hussain Trophy for the mini nationals. India also conducts the Jawaharlal Nehru International Gold Cup tournament, which was inaugurated on 16th February 1982 at Calcutta. India has also been participating in the Asian Youth soccer championship with the best performance being the sharing of the title with Iran in 1974 at Bangkok.

The game was introduced in the Olympics in 1908 when England' defeated Denmark 2-0 in the final. The World Cup, the most prestigious and widely followed sports tournament of the world, was instituted in 1930 as the Jules Rimet Cup. It became the permanent property of Brazil for having won it the third time in 1970; Brazil had earlier won the World Cup in 1958 and 1962. The World Cup in 1974 in Germany saw the. second phase of this World Championship known as the FIFA World Cup. The game of football was brought to India by the Britishers and the Indian populace easily took to the game, which first became popular in the Bengal region and then spread to other parts of the country. Organised football was introduced in India by the British Army in 1880, but there is evidence of a football match in 1802 in Bombay between a Military team and an Island team of Bombay. The first official match was organised in Calcutta between the Etonians and the rest. The first trophy instituted in Calcutta was the Traders’ Cup in 1889, now played as a junior tournament. Club football had become popular in India in the late 19th century with the formation of the Mohun Bagan Club in 1889 and Mohammedan Sporting in 1891. The Durand Cup football tournament, the world’s second oldest tournament, was started in Shimla in 1888. Since 1941, the tournament is being regularly held on .an annual basis in New Delhi. The Indian Football Association, Calcutta, the oldest State-level organisation in India was formed in 1893, the same year in which the IFA Shield tournament was started. The Rovers Cup football tournament founded in 1891 has been conducted by the Western India Football Association since 1911, the year in which the association was founded. The All-India Football Federation was founded on 23rd June, 1937 at Shimla in the committee room of the Army headquarters with 10 members and the national championship for the Santosh Trophy (named after the Maharaja of the erstwhile state of Santosh, now in Bangladesh) introduced in 1941. The DCM Trophy football tournament started in 1945 became an international tournament from 1968 with the participation of foreign teams. India made its Olympic debut in football at the 1948 London Games, but lost 1-2 to France in the first match. In the 1956 Melbourne Olympics India became the first Asian nation to reach the semifinals of an Olympic football event defeating Australia 4-2 in the quarter-final including a hat-trick by Neville D’ Souza of Bombay. Since the 1960 Rome Olympics, India has not qualified for the Olympics. With the British regimental teams dominating the initial phase of Indian football, the Bangalore Muslims became the first Indian team to win the Rovers Cup in 1937 defeating Mohammedan Sporting 1-0 in the final. India won the gold medals in the 1951 and 1962 Asian Games at New Delhi and Jakarta respectively and the bronze medal in the 1970 Bangkok Asiad. Having won the quadrangular tournaments in 1953, 1954 and 1955, India finished as runners-up to hosts Malaysia in the 1959 Merdeka Cup. The other major tournaments in the Indian football calendar include the Federation Cup tournament. Started in 1977 at Er- nakulam when ITI, Bangalore beat Mohun Bagan 1-0 in the final, this inter-club tournament gives the winning team the right to the title of the ‘champion club of India’; Stafford Cup tournament - started in Bangalore in 1930s when the game became popular in the city due to the stationing of many military units, the tournament has now become an all-India tournament with the participation of well- known teams from Calcutta, Goa and Bombay; Dr. B.C. Roy Trophy

Awards and Winners

Padma Shree : G. Paul and Salien Manna

Arjuna : P.K. Banerjee, T. Balaram, Subimal (Chunni) Goswami, Jarnail Singh, Arun Lai Ghosh, Yousuf Khan, Peter Thangaraj, Inder Singh, Syed Nayeemuddin, Chandeshwar Prasad Singh, Magan Singh Rijvi, Gurudev Singh, Prasun Banerjee, Subroto Bhat- tacharjee, Mohammed Habib and Sudhir Karmakar. Dronacharya (for coaches) : A. Latif and Syed Nayeemuddin

Winners of Asian Games Football Championship

SI.No.

Year

Winner

Venue

1.

1951

India

New Delhi

1954

China

Manila

2 .

3.

1958

China

Tokyo

4.

1962

India

Jakarta

5.

1966

Burma

Bangkok

1970

Burma & South Korea

Bangkok

6 .

7.

1974

Iran

Teheran

8 .

1978

South and North Korea

Bangkok

9.

1982

Iraq

New Delhi

1986

South Korea

Seoul

10 .

1990

Iran

Beijing

11 .

On the World Cup scene, India qualified for the fourth World Cup in 1950 from Group 10, but the team was subsequently withdrawn from the tournament.

WOMEN’S FOOTBALL

Women’s football was introduced in India in the International Women’s Year by S.R. Zaidi. The Women’s Football Federation of India was formed in 1975 and the first national women’s championships held during 1975/76 at the Central Sports Stadium, Lucknow. Mr. Zaidi was also responsible for the introduction of junior nationals, zonal, inter-zonal and Federation Cup tournaments for women in India. The first national coaching camp preparatory to playing against Thailand was held at Calcutta from 26th April to 8th May, 1976 and to G.S. Bharati of Karnataka went the honour of becoming the captain of the first national team. In 1977, a Swedish team played a series of matches in India, followed in 1978 by an eight-match series by Tiversan, a team from South England. While the Indian team’s participation in the second Asian Confederation tournament was cancelled due to non-availability of visa and non-clearance by the government, the Women’s Football Federation of India played host to the third Asian Women’s football championship in 1980 at Calicut. Six foreign and two Indian teams participated in the tour- nament, which was won by China. Between 1970 and 1977, three