Remembering the immortal Eleven of 1911, as Lucknow Super Giants plays in Mohun Bagan colours tonight

The Mohun Bagan A.C. team that won the 1911 IFA shield against East Yorkshire regiment. Mohun Bagan were the first Indian-only team to win the IFA Shield. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Sanjiv Goenka recently renamed Mohun Bagan, one of the oldest Asian football clubs, as the Mohun Bagan Super Giant. Goenka also owns the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Lucknow Super Giants, who will play the Kolkata Knight Riders at the Eden Gardens on May 20.

For this match, the Lucknow franchise will abandon their blues and don the iconic Mohun Bagan maroon-and-green jersey at a venue where the football club had played many a famous match, including a clash against Pele’s New York Cosmos in 1977.

Mohun Bagan was founded in 1889 on August 15, a date that would attain significance in India 58 years later. The first significant moment in their long, illustrious history came on July 29, 1911.

It was a curious time for Indian sport. The previous year, Ghulam Mohammad Baksh Butt – The Great Gama – had thrashed Stanislaus Zbyszko, the world champion wrestler from Poland, in a one-sided bout in London. The British media celebrated Gama – Indian by birth, hence a British subject – as the new world champion.

A year before that, in 1909, the ICC had been founded in London. The original members were England, Australia, and South Africa. India, not invited to the conference, realized that they had to tour England more often to gain importance.

In 1911, Bhupinder Singh, the Maharaja of Patiala, funded and led the first All-India cricket team to England. Barring some individual performances, the Indians had a disappointing tour. There was no Test match, and in all their matches against the counties, the Indians beat only Leicestershire and Somerset in July.

In the same month, the barefoot Mohun Bagan players made significant strides in the IFA Shield back home. They beat St Xavier’s College 3-0, Calcutta Rangers 2-1, and, in the quarter-final, Rifle Brigade 1-0.

(Note: It is often believed that the Mohun Bagan footballers preferred to play barefoot because boots “cramped their style of play”. While romantic, this was probably untrue. Novy Kapadia suggests economic conditions as a more plausible reason: “At the turn of the twentieth century, hand-sewn football boots cost Rs 7 and 4 annas, a lot of money in those days.”)

At a time when arrangements were being made to shift the Indian capital from Calcutta to Delhi, coach Sailen Basu’s team had suddenly become the talk of the city – and even beyond.

It was a remarkable unit. Hiralal Mukherjee saved three penalties against St Xavier’s; Bhuti Sukul was known for his tackles, and Sudhir Chatterjee manned the defence; and in the mid-field, they had Manmohan Mukherjee on the right, Rajen Sengupta in the centre, and Nilmadhav Bhattacharya to the left.

In front of them the formidable quintet of the very swift Kanu Roy; Habul Sarkar; Abhilash Ghosh; and the Bhaduri brothers, Bijoydas, the famous dribbler, and the captain of the side, the very agile Shibdas.

Bijoydas Bhaduri had scored four of the six goals in the first three matches, Shibdas one, and Ghosh the sixth. In the semi-final against the Middlesex Regiment, Roy scored from a long range to seal a 1-1 draw.

In the era before penalty shootouts, a re-match was held as per norm two days later. Shibdas Bhaduri, Sarkar, and Roy all scored as Mohun Bagan routed Middlesex 3-0.

The margin of the semi-final, combined with the prospect of an all-Indian side playing against a British team, East Yorkshire Regiment, in an IFA Shield final drew crowds from far away.

They arrived from Assam and Bihar, prompting the East India Railway to issue a special train. Extra steamers were deployed to ferry fans from rural Bengal, then an undivided province.

As the demands increased, tickets began to be sold in the black market, and the Re 1 and Rs 2 rates soared to Rs 15. Still, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 turned up for the final, at the CFC Ground (now the Mohun Bagan Ground). Even the treetops were taken over.

The crowd may not seem enormous by today’s standards, but one must keep in mind that according to the 1911 census, the population of Calcutta and its suburbs was 1,043,307. In other words, about one-twelfth to one-tenth of the city’s population was at the venue that day.

There were still thousands of fans waiting outside, eager for news. To assist them, the fans present at the ground began to release maroon-and-green kites at regular intervals, with the score written on them.

The first half ended without a goal. Sergeant Jackson put East Yorkshire ahead with about 15 minutes left, but Shibdas Bhaduri made it 1-1 shortly afterwards, and Ghosh clinched the match with the final goal of the match.

Mohun Bagan made history by becoming the first Indian-only team to win the IFA Shield. The news of their triumph was covered across India as well as in England, by Reuters, and in The Times, Daily Mail, and Manchester Guardian.

The club celebrates July 29, the day of the triumph, as Mohun Bagan Day, and the team as Omor Ekadosh (The Immortal Eleven). To commemorate a century of the triumph, Egaro, the Immortal Eleven, a Bangla movie, released in 2011.