Ahmed Khan's world

Footballer Ahmed Khan, say, Chuni Goswami & Pradip Banerjee, is India's greatest forward

It is not surprising that the passing of footballer Ahmed Khan on Sunday went virtually unnoticed at least in the print media. Ahmed Khan, say football legends such as Chuni Goswami and Pradip Banerjee, is India’s greatest forward since the Second World War. If the history of Calcutta football is to be carved into phases, Khan belonged roughly to the third phase of it (I stick to Calcutta football, because football has never been a pan-Indian game, even though some southern states — Ahmed Khan was from Mysore — and the Railways had excellent teams). But it was an important game in Calcutta, not just for the crowds it drew but also for the way much of the city’s social life was anchored in football. And, though in international football India never figured prominently — there has never been an Indian team at the World Cup — in Asia it was among the top sides, proved by the fact it won the gold at the Asian Games in 1951 and 1962. And India did qualify to participate in Olympic football in those days, 1960 being the last of those happy years. 

At the very outset it needs to be stated that though the epicentre of Indian football was Calcutta, it was never a purely Bengali affair except in its early years, which may be called the first phase. The Mohun Bagan team that won the IFA Shield in 1911 — the first Indian team to have done so — by beating the East Yorkshire Regiment was almost entirely Bengali. The victory stoked nationalist feelings to a great degree because it showed Bengalis, though they played barefoot, could beat boot-wearing Brits in their own game.

But the subsequent years proved that the win was a flash in the pan. No Indian side achieved any success worth the name in the next 23 years, until 1934, when Mohammedan Sporting won the League for the first time and went on winning it for the next four years, making it five times in a row (a record that held for almost 40 years). Though it could be a fanciful way of seeing the past as always glorious, this Mohammedan Sporting has been held by many (Pradip Banerjee included) to be India’s greatest club side ever.

And most of the players were either from the North-West Frontier Provinces or Mysore. Growing up hearing about the footballing exploits of Osman (goalkeeper), Jumma Khan, Bachchi Khan (a murderous tackler), Masoom, Rashid, or Abbas has been fairytale stuff for those who are 50 or older and have lived in Calcutta during their early years. But the irony of it is that this formidable team often could not hold the fort against East Bengal, which too had a substantial number of non-Bengali players such as Lakshminarayan, Murgesh, and Somana. Later came Apparao and Pagsley. Contrast this with Mohun Bagan, which, despite having the legendary Gostho Pal in the 1920s, could not do much. 

This trend continued in the third phase, the fifties and the sixties, to which belonged Ahmed Khan. Among his team mates were Venkatesh, Apparao, Saleh, and Dhanraj — all attackers. They were known as the Panch Pandavs of East Bengal and yet none was a Bengali. This period was also one that added a dimension to football in the city. It was the influx of refugees from East Pakistan, and they settled mostly in the southern parts of Calcutta. All of them supported East Bengal and though he was a Muslim, they worshipped Ahmed Khan. When it came to Ahmed Khan or Taj Mohammed, another non-Bengali great of East Bengal, all Hindu-Muslim rivalry was forgotten. The lower-middle classes solidly lent their weight to this monument called Calcutta football. People left office by five and reached home much before six, which made social visits possible even on weekdays, mostly to discuss sport and petty politics. Men playing carom at the street corner after 10 in the evening was not an uncommon sight. While playing, they endlessly talked football (and cricket in winter). And looking at the price of hilsa today, it is difficult to puzzle out how this variety of fish featured on the dinner table of every East Bengal-supporting family whenever the club defeated Mohun Bagan.

But this did not last. The first challenge came in 1982, when the country first saw the World Cup football semi-finals and the final live on TV.

In 1986, when the entire World Cup was shown live, there were reports of people, fed up with the relatively poor standard of local football, walking out of the stadium while the game was on. Without doubt, we were experiencing a different charm of seeing the best players of the world, but, along with that, a world that was ours was lost. And that is the world of the Apparaos and the Ahmed Khans. So, to return to the original point, it is no surprise that we do not know them today. Chances are they are gone forever.

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