Gill writes letters to chief ministers

Sports Minister Dr MS Gill is following up the felicitation of members of the 1956 Olympics football team with requests to chief ministers of different states to do likewise by honouring the players who had made it to the semifinals.

Gill has written to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (West Bengal), Ashok Chavan (Maharashtra) and Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy (Andhra Pradesh) asking them to emulate the central government by honouring all these former players irrespective of which state they belong to.

“At the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, India’s football team played magnificently, and reached the semifinals. It has never happened since,” he wrote in his letter to the three CMs.

“I had recently gone to Kolkata, where I met the captain of the team, Shri (Samar) Banerjee, and I decided to honour these heroes at Delhi. We held a function to greet and honour them and present them with shawls, a silver plaque, and cash awards. Newspapers all across India have carried out this story, which has touched many hearts,” he wrote.

The Sports Minister had organised the function here on Monday in which these former players were awarded Rs 1.5 lakh each.

The Indian football team was a formidable outfit in the 1950s, having twice won the Asian Games gold medal among other achievements, but providence had played a big role in them reaching the semifinals at Melbourne.

In a field depleted due to a boycott by some countries, India had a face-off with Australia for a place in the semifinals. The hosts were beaten 4-2 by India in a surprise win orchestrated by Neville D’ Souza’s hattrick.

That was India’s only win in three matches in the tournament as they lost to Yugoslavia (1-4) in the semifinals and later went down tamely to Bulgaria (0-3) in the match for the bronze medal.