Obituaries

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Re: Obituaries

Post by sameerph »

RIP Dev Anand. Truly an end an era for Indian film industry.
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Re: The Loss of Jagjit SIngh hurts

Post by josephray »

he was the real king of ghazals
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Re: Obituaries

Post by jayakris »

Moved the Jagjit Singh posts to the proper thread. Yes, he was an amazing singer. He will be badly missed. Jay
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Re: Obituaries

Post by Sandeep »

Zhang Jun, who took Bharatanatyam to China died yesterday of Cancer. RIP

If is fascinating to read her story, she is sent to India as a 19 year old by China to study Indian dance and culture to strengthen the relationship further.

Here is her fascinating story http://bit.ly/yBQuVS
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Re: Obituaries

Post by Omkara »

Soccer legend Sailen Manna passed away. Here is a small news item from NDTV
Olympian and 1951 Asian Games gold medal winning football captain Sailen Manna died at a private hospital in the wee hours on Monday.

Manna was 87 and is survived by his wife and daughter.

Ailing for more than a year, Manna's condition turned critical last night and he was rushed to a Salt Lake hospital around 11 pm.

"He was put on life support... But his condition did not improve. My daughter was with him. And the sad news came around 1.55 pm," his wife Abha Manna said.

Known as one of the best Indian defenders who went on to become a captain of high repute, he made his first international appearance in 1948 London Olympics.

Manna was the captain of India in the 1952 Olympics and a member of the 1954 Asian Games team. He was awarded the Padmashree in 1971.

A graduate of the Surendranath College in the city, Manna started his playing career for Howrah Union, then a club in the second division Calcutta Football League in 1940.

Known for his powerful freekicks, Manna switched to Mohun Bagan after a couple of seasons and continued playing for the club for a period of 19 years till his retirement in 1960.

He was captain of Mohun Bagan from 1950-1955. The club conferred him 'Mohun Bagan Ratna' in 2001.

Among other honours, he was included in the list of the 10 best captains of the world by English FA in 1953 and awarded the 'Footballer of the Millennium' by the All India Football Federation in 2000.

Manna was instrumental in shaping careers of many footballers of his generation.

One among them was former Olympian striker Shew Mewa Lall who died in 2008.

In an interview to PTI before his death, Mewa Lall had said "we have learnt many things from him. He was a leader per excellence.

"But at the same time, he was very friendly," said Mewa Lall, who scored the match winning goal against Iran in 1951 Asian Games.
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Re: Obituaries

Post by jayakris »

Sad day. Another one from that great group of footballers gone. I hope India will play today's international friendly in his honor and win it for him. Jay
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Re: Obituaries

Post by Prashant »

RIP Sailen Manna.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I never once heard the names of the great footballers of India's past. Plenty about the cricketers, a reasonable amount about the hockey players like Dhyan Chand, even track stars like Milkha Singh. But never a word about any footballers. Makes me sad sometimes to think how long our national consciousness has been directed away from my favorite sport.

I guess in Kolkata, where the culture of the large clubs is still solid, the situation is probably different.
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Re: Obituaries

Post by jayakris »

Not that most kids in Kerala knew, but at some point while growing up in the 70s in Kerala, I did hear of some greats - Sailen Manna, Mewalal, Peter Thangaraj and Chuni Goswami from the 50s. Sad to see that three are gone, and the one who remains (Chuni) is now quite disgraced after a drunk incident etc. Jay
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Re: Obituaries

Post by jic »

Never heard of him until now, but it seems like he was quite a stalwart legend of Indian football. As Prashant says, there was always news of legends of hockey, track, tennis, and of course cricket. But football, for some reason, did not seem to have a national awareness, except in States like Kerala and Bengal. RIP, Sailen Manna.
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Re: Obituaries

Post by PKBasu »

Beautiful, moving obituary of Sailendra Nath Manna in this week's edition of The Economist, which calls him a "saint among footballers". Opponents always sought to injure his toes, as he played barefoot. At the London Olympics (1948), India barely lost 1-2 to France. France! And of course the AIFF didn't understand the importance of the World Cup, and so didn't send the team led by him, although they had qualified... :-(
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Re: Obituaries

Post by Varma »

Nirmal Shekar, former Sports Editor of "The Hindu" passes away.

What a sports journalist he was! I used to devour on his articles, especially during my college years and later. When it came to Tennis, no sports journalist in India will ever be able to reach the depths he often did. Coming from a Telugu Medium background and having limited exposure to Enlgish during my school years, I had built most of my vocabulary from his writings.

Strangely enough, the concluding lines of his last article (published on 28th Jan) reads - "But the truth is, nothing may be forever — except perhaps Bradman’s Test batting average of 99.94 — immune to evolution. And, sport is no exception."

RIP, Nirmal Shekar! You will be sorely missed!

- Varma
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Re: Obituaries

Post by jayakris »

Nirmal Sekhar was a terrific writer, and will be sorely missed for the style of writing he had. To be fair, I had criticized him for not covering Indians' matches much, and not not leaving the center court at the grand Slams that he was always a fixture at. You will probably find some posts here, in which I have mentioned that too. He would also never sound too impressed with Indian players, and would not hype anybody. As I was a self-appointed hype-machine for Indian players for a good 10 year period of blog-writing, I never liked that. But Nirmal Sekhar would only write what he saw. And he knew his tennis for sure. I would hate him, but I would read everything he wrote, because it was always simply beautiful to read.

I have had the chance to even talk to him one time, as I called the press box in Korea during our Davis Cup tie there in 1998. Our tennisindia.org was the only source for some real-time tennis scores for all of India then. Nirmal was the only one in the press room at Sogwipo, Korea, who spoke English, so the moment I called, somebody would pass the phone to him. India had made a great comeback to 2-2 after an 0-2 start, and we were in the 5th match. I was thrilled like a puppy. Mahesh had just won the first set in a tiebreaker against Yong Il Yoon when I called. Nirmal told me that Mahesh wasn't playing well and didn't sound thrilled at all. I thought he was being unnecessarily unexcited about our players, but as I found out soon, he was just calling it as he was seeing it. I called an hour later expecting to celebrate, and MB had lost 76 16 16 16... "I told you he wasn't playing well," said Nirmal, and he went on to talk about what MB was doing wrong in the match. He was being a journalist and watching the match, and not doing rah-rah like the fan reporter that I was. So, in my only interaction with the man, I found him to be very very straight-forward in his view of what he was reporting.

Nirmal Sekhar will be missed. A great sports scribe that we all grew up with!
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Re: General Tennis Discussions

Post by Rajiv »

Nirmal Shekar , the Nevile Cardus , Bud Collins of Indian Tennis Journalism is no more.
No one in India matched his qualities in the way he covered Tennis with authority and his brilliant analysis.
His Grand Slam coverrage , Pre and Post Davis Cup articles, were a treat to read and how ironic that he passed away on the eve of a Davis Cup tie.
R.I.P Nirmal Shekar
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Re: Obituaries

Post by Varma »

Jay, here is an interesting snippet from the tribute paid to Nirmal Shekar on Vino John's FB Page (The Hindu photographer)...
He has covered many Wimbledon and Australian Open Tennis during his career. He used to be regular for almost all the Davis Cup matches both in India and abroad. His selection of sports images will be different from others. Nirmal Shekar is the one who spotted Mahesh Bhupathy while he was playing in Malaysian Circuit in early 90's, during his early playing days and brought him to limelight.
- Varma
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Re: Obituaries

Post by arjun2761 »

FWIW, Mahesh was a pretty successful player at the NCAA for the Ole Miss rebels winning the 1995 NCAA doubles title with Ali Hamadeh and also ending as the #1 collegiate team.
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