Durand is the third oldest football tournament in the world and oldest in Asia and India. The tournament is unique because the winning team gets not one trophy, but three! The Durand Cup and Shimla Trophy are rolling trophies while the President’s Cup, first presented by Dr. Rajender Prasad is given to the team permanently. The tournament is conducted in two phases, ‘knockout’ and ‘quarter finals’ phase. Currently, 20 teams participate in the knockout phase, from which two teams are selected for quarter finals. The top nine league teams, according to their current ranking, and the Services champion team are directly seeded in the quarter finals. The tournament is conducted over twenty days.
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he Durand cup history dates back to 1888 in Shimla. It is the oldest football tournament in India and also the 3rd oldest in the world-after the English and the Scottish FA cup. It was started by Sir Mortimer Durand, the then foreign secretary of the British Raj. Sir Henry Mortimer Durand was born in Sehore, Bhopal State of India on the 14th of February 1850 and died in England in 1924. During the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880) he was the political secretary at Kabul and from 1884 to 1894 he was the foreign secretary of India. In 1893 he negotiated with Abdur Rahman Khan, Amir of Afghanistan, the frontier between British India and Afghanistan. This line is called the Durand Line after him. The Durand tournament was basically intended as ‘out-door relief’ and recreation for European troops stationed in India.
The British Indian Army was given the charge of running and organizing the cup. Initially, it was an intra-army cup, where about eleven different teams used to participate. The Royal Scots Fusiliers won the inaugural cup by defeating Highland Light Infantry with a score of 2-1. Some historians opine that there were two reasons that the British introduced the football tournament in India. Firstly, it was their extreme passion for the game and secondly it was also a way of inculcating camaraderie in the army. However, notwithstanding the larger objectives, the British cannot be condemned for pioneering a harmless sports tournament. In fact, just as we credit them for introducing railways, English and of course cricket, they need to be given their due for ushering in competitive football in India.
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The British Indian Army was given the charge of running and organizing the cup. Initially, it was an intra-army cup, where about eleven different teams used to participate. The Royal Scots Fusiliers won the inaugural cup by defeating Highland Light Infantry with a score of 2-1. Some historians opine that there were two reasons that the British introduced the football tournament in India. Firstly, it was their extreme passion for the game and secondly it was also a way of inculcating camaraderie in the army. However, notwithstanding the larger objectives, the British cannot be condemned for pioneering a harmless sports tournament. In fact, just as we credit them for introducing railways, English and of course cricket, they need to be given their due for ushering in competitive football in India.
log on http://indiansuperleaguefootball.com/ http://indiansuperleaguefootball.com/
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