Midnapore / Salt Lake – WEST BENGAL :
The Maidan may know the former Mohammedan Sporting star as Moidul Islam but that wasn’t his name when he came to Calcutta from Midnapore in 1973. “I was born Mohiul Islam. It was commentator Ajay Basu who kept using this name on the radio. And before I knew, I was Moidul to the entire state. So I too started using that name,” says the FD Block resident.
Name change was not new to Islam. He was spotted on the village fields by the games secretary of State Transport Corporation Dasrathi Sinha. “On his advice, I shifted to Calcutta. He even arranged for my accommodation at the STC tent on the Maidan. Whenever I visited his home, he would introduce me to his elder sister as Mridul.”
After playing a year in the second division for Suburban Club, he was signed by Kidderpore Fotbal Club. In 1977, he got his first job with Port Trust of India, which had a football team. But when he got a call-up from Mohammedan in 1979, he quit without telling his family. “Word reached our village that I was jobless. I was away playing in Nagji trophy then. My father got worried that if I got injured my career would be over. I had to reason with him.” But he would soon get another job, with Food Corporation of India.
He shifted to Salt Lake in 1983, putting up first at Karunamoyee Housing Estate. He was with Mohammedan then. “I was the only club footballer staying in Salt Lake in those days. People would queue up in front of my building, seeking free match tickets. In those days, the club gave us tickets against deduction from our payments. I could not manage even after picking up a thousand.” He would shift to the FCI Quarters in DL Block in 1991.
Islam gets nostalgic talking of the 80s. “People would queue up from 3am at the Maidan in search of tickets. If we lost a match, it would get difficult for us to get out of the ground. We were escorted home in police vans. Football was rarely on TV except for the big matches at the Salt Lake stadium. Where is that kind of craze now? People don’t go to the ground even if they get tickets.”
The big crowds for the Fifa Under-17 World Cup, he suspects, were driven by a craze to attend a World Cup and also to see the renovated stadium.
He gets goosebumps on remembering the 1.10 lakh people in the stands when East Bengal played Diamant club of Cameroon in 1990. “Anandabazar Patrika printed a picture of me tackling Roger Milla (the 42-year-old star of the year’s World Cup). He got upset that I stuck to his side through the match. Diamant won but by a slender margin of 2-1.”
Other than Durand Cup and the IFA Shield, he has been a part of every tournament win in his 10 years with Mohammedan, three years with East Bengal and one year with Mohun Bagan. Among his clubmates, he has great respect for Mohd. Habib, Gautam Sarkar, Shabir Ali, Prasun Banerjee, Prasanta Banerjee among Indians and the Iranian duo Majid Baskar and Jamshid Nassiri. “My son Tariq grew up in their laps.” He remembers having brought Chima Okorie to Mohammedan while he was a student in Waltair. Emeka (Ezeugo), Chibuzor (Nwakanma) and Christopher also played with him at Mohammedan. He is upset that because of retired players from abroad being hired in the cash-rich Indian Super League, local strikers are not getting enough opportunities.
He is not sure how much hosting the U-17 World Cup would help Indian football. “Unless the infrastructure is in place and sports is made mandatory in school, nothing will happen. Around the time Mannada (Sailen Manna) played football, they were close to the other teams. But the rest of the world improved in leaps and bounds while we stagnated. Look at the standard of the youth teams of African nations like Ghana and Mali which came to the tournament!”
Salt Lake may be blessed with grounds, but parents here, he says, think football is too laborious a sport.
Islam is a poster boy for communal harmony. “We are a family of pirs. My uncle was a maulana in a madrasa. But we grew up in a harmonious atmosphere, with friends from one community participating in festivals of the others.” All hell broke loose when he fell in love with Sonali Das. “She was the only daughter and their family was dead against this alliance. Nonetheless we went for a registered marriage in 1983.” Even his daughter-in-law Priyanka is Hindu. “Tariq too has married for love. We had a grand reception in FD community hall in 2010,” smiles the 62-year-old who can sometimes be spotted playing football with the likes of musician Upal and filmmaker Shoojit Sircar at the Bikash Bhavan ground.
Sudeshna Banerjee / saltlake@abpmail.com
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta,India / by Sudeshna Banerjee / October 05th, 2017