Chuni Goswami: an all-rounder in the truest sense | Football news

If there is a personality in Indian sports, who had a painter’s eye for the football canvas and mixed his meticulous perfectionism on the field with a pin-up image during his playing career, Subimal ‘Chuni’ Goswami would find no rival.

The legendary striker, who last breathed at 82 in Calcutta on Thursday, was the Indian soccer fan, a quintessential cricket player who once led Bengal to the Ranji Trophy final in the 1971-72 season and it helped India demolish the powerful West Indies. in a touring game In short, he was an “expert” in everything, be it a tennis racket or a hockey stick.

His death took place a month after the death of another legend, Pradip Kumar Banerjee. The duo formed a legendary attack triumvirate along with Tulsidas Balaram, who came to be known as “Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar” of Indian football. Balaram now remains the sole surviving member of the trio.

Such was Chuni’s dominance on a soccer field that reportedly attracted the interest of England’s Tottenham Hotspur. However, he remained a faithful Mohun Bagan, having played for them non-stop from 1954 to 1968, presiding over the club’s golden period in the 1960s. The fact that he helped the Greens and Maroons win 31 trophies while scoring 200 Goals during this spell speaks volumes about his legend at the club.

However, the Chuni legend could not be limited to soccer alone. If Indian sports had some versatile athlete, who could have worn many hats with the same intensity and experience and earned name and fame in equal measure, it was him.

A first-class career spanning a century, seven fifties and 47 wickets, he shifted his sporting focus to cricket after retiring as a Bagan player in 1968. But the fact that the first of his three seasons with Bengal cricket It happened in 1962-63 – at a time when he was at the peak of his football career – he tells of his rare quality of being a versatile athlete, never seen in the Indian sports landscape.

One story tells that Gary Sobers was so impressed by his cricket skills that the legendary West Indies SUV was shocked to learn that Chuni was also an Indian soccer star.

Born in Kishoreganj in undivided Bengal on January 15, 1938, Chuni was an athlete of nature. He soon caught everyone’s attention thanks to his exceptional balance, his ability to dribble and his speed, which ultimately made him a star striker in the 1950s and ’60s.

No wonder it was a perfectly Indian debut when he scored a goal against Burma at the 1958 Asian Games in Tokyo. Four years later, he established his legend, bringing the national team to glory at the upcoming Asian Games, which is still considered the country’s best performance on the international soccer stage.

It was during this time that his stardom reached extraordinary heights when he used to rub shoulders with tinsel stars like Uttam Kumar and Dileep Kumar and had admirers from the highest levels of society, including the second President of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

Soccer was his predominant field where he created his magic and myth. Legend has it that in 1967, a year before hanging up his boots as a professional footballer, he helped Mohun Bagan beat East Bengal with his strike in the second leg of the Calcutta Football League. That victory also paved the way for Mohammedan Sporting’s march to the title.

When he returned home after the game, he saw several packages of biryani that Mohammedan Sporting sent him as a sign of gratitude.

“There would be no Pradip Kumar Banerjee in Indian soccer. Nor would there be Chuni Goswami in Indian soccer,” said former India forward and renowned coach Subhas Bhowmick.

Unlike PK, he never resorted to post-retirement training and instead nurtured the Indian football nursery as director of the famous Tata Academy.

Indian sports may have lost their ‘Chuni’ now, but their legend will live on.