The picturesque, magnificent and sprawling Saruxojai stadium was electrifyingly agog with excitement on 5th September last when Team India had clashed against Oman for the first of six qualifying matches in the run up to a place in the FIFA World Cup 2022. The euphoric support for the national outfit right from the first minute had reached a crescendo in the twentieth minute when Sunil Chetri, displaying great skill, scored a fantastic goal to put the home team ahead of Oman. Notwithstanding the fact that the team lost the match in the dying moments, the vociferous Guwahati crowd could discern the rarely seen fighting spirit and football skills by a charged up Indian team coached by the Croatian coach, Igor Stimach.
The craze, the passion witnessed to watch the national team play has once again reasserted the fact that among all games, football continues to be the most popular source of entertainment for the connoisseurs of sports. It needs no reiteration that while cricket and tennis have definitely huge fan followings, the game of football, with comparatively lesser technical complexities, outshines other games when it comes to outstanding global popularity.
While cricket, like in other parts of the country, had been basically a middle or upper middle class game in this part of the country as well, football has been the most popular game across the length and breadth of our state. The sight of the congregation of huge football followers from Shillong or other parts of Meghalaya at the Nehru Stadium, Guwahati till the early 1980s – all coming down to watch good football matches - is very familiar to the sports lovers of yesteryears.
Bordoloi Trophy, a premier football tournament organised by Assam Football Association, was the most popular football tournament of this region up to the mid-80s in which all the celebrated football teams of the country along with a number of foreign teams used to participate unfailingly. Other popular tournaments were Swadhinata Cup tournament at Nagaon, Deokan Trophy at Jorhat, Shyamala Sundari Shield at Dhubri etc. Bordoloi Trophy, however, being head and shoulders above all such tournaments, had generated tremendous amount of enthusiasm - almost like the annual auspicious festivals - and the football lovers waited with bated breath for the tournament to whet their appetite of watching quality football.
Till the early 1960s, Bordoloi Trophy was confined to competition basically among the local teams in which the friendly but intense rivalry between Gauhati Town Club and Maharana A.C. Club used to draw fans in large numbers. With the increase in popularity and stature of Bordoloi Trophy, the flood gates were opened for outstation teams and the then giants of Kolkata - Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and Md Sporting - became regular participants which definitely and clearly gave a new dimension and stature to the tournament.
While the big names of Kolkata football teams were attraction for the admirers, Assam Police football club was emerging as a strong contender and fierce fighter with their never-say-die attitude. With the beginning of the decade of 1970s, the outfit became the heartthrob of the football lovers of Assam on the strength of its superlative performance. Mention must be made of the names of Chandra Mohon Gonju, Bijay Nath, Subir Choudhury, Salil Marak and Kalimuddin, the great daring goalkeepers, to name a few only, whose names are still remembered for their great display of spirited performance. However, the man who won the heart of every one was Gilbertson Sangma.
Sangma had all the ingredients of a modern footballer - skill, speed and stamina. I vividly remember that in 1971 the Assam Police football team was playing the final of Bordoloi Trophy tournament against Md Sporting. Backed by a strong fifty thousand approximated crowd, the Assam Police football team had played scintillating football and had caught the Calcutta giant on the wrong foot on a number of occasions. Towards the dying moments of the game, Gilbertson, outwitting two Md Sporting defenders with his deft dribbling, had rushed towards the penalty region and then foxed the goalkeeper with a left footed flick to score the solitary winning gold amidst thunderous applause of the crowd. The star-studded Md. Sporting team was stunned – too shocked to believe what had happened. On the referee’s final whistle, not only the crowd present at Nehru stadium had gone berserk but there was unprecedented jubilation in the entire state.
During the seventies, Gilbert Sangma was the darling of the crowd. The Hindustan Times, a leading national daily, had termed him as a man with the “golden boot.”
The mind boggling technological advancement made by our country, especially in the last three decades, along with the growing popularity of visual media has resulted in making television an inseparable part of our day-to-day existence. The viewers now have the privilege of watching top class football games sitting in their drawing rooms and as a natural consequence, their interest in Indian football has diminished considerably.
The sight of long queues to watch Bordoloi Trophy matches has become a thing of the past and almost relegated into the pages of sporting history. The support and craze of the connoisseurs of football witnessed in ISL in the last session coupled with spirited the Indian performance promise to be a harbinger of golden days in Indian football.