Event: Charity Football Match between Filmstars XI (captained by Mithun Chakraborty)and Television Stars XI (captained by Sourav Ganguly)
The Cause: To raise funds for Aila victims.
Where: Vidyasagar Krirangan, Barasat, West Bengal.
When: Sunday, 12th July, 2009.
Event Description, in a nutshell:
Celebrities from all walks of life joined hands with the 25,000-strong crowd to raise funds for the people who were left homeless when Cyclone Aila struck Bengal in May.
The match between Mithun’s Film Stars XI and Sourav's TV Stars XI helped raise Rs 30 lakh, which was donated to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. State Sports Minister Subhas Chakraborty upped the amount saying that he would donate another Rs 10 lakh to the fund.
The Chief organiser for the event was the West Bengal Motion Picture Artistes Forum which must be thanked for the earnest endeavour. However, the event was needed to be organised a tad earlier because of the exigencies of the disaster relief. Anyways, the reason behind the delay of about a couple of months was due to the arranging of the grand meet adjusting the dates of the busy stars and other such organisational hassles.
What was most noteworthy was Tollywood's solidarity to reach out to those in need.
The Filmstars XI team comprised of such big names as Mithun Chakraborty, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Jeet, Ferdous and Jishu Sengupta, alongwith Tota, Sagnik, Rahul, Rishi, Biswanath, Kanchan, Vivek Trivedi, Sabyasachi Chakraborty etc.
The TV Stars XI team had ace cricketer and former captain of the Indian team, Sourav Ganguly, alongwith fellow cricketer LaxmiRatan Shukla, and television actors like Badsha Moitra, Neel Mukherjee, Saheb Bhattacharya, Suman Banerjee, Bhaskar, Parthasarathi, Riju, Jayjit, Debesh etc.
The TV stars had Subhash Bowmik as their coach. Whereas the filmstars had Subroto Bhattacharya as their coach.
The two goalies were the strongest team-members in both the sides, Atanu Bhattacharya and Debashis Mukherjee, both with goal-keeping experience at the national level.
Much missed stars at the event: Dev, Debasree Roy and Swastika Mukherjee, who were unable to adjust their schedules.
Conspicuous absence: Tapas Paul and Satabdi Roy, the star-turned-politicians who reportedly reached the venue only to leave immediately in a huff. Also absent were Aparna Sen and other members of the rebel political brigade.
Most of the cheering came from Usha Uthup, the noted singer. Also seen cheering were the likes of Rituparna Sengupta, Koel Mullick, Hiran Chatterjee, Priyanka, Ranjit Mullick, Rimjhim Mitra, Rimjhim Gupta, Debaleena, Ushasie, Rupanjana, Kanchana, Mithu Chakraborty, Jayanta Dutt-Burman, Dolon Roy, Debdoot Ghosh etc.
Entertainment at half-time was provided by Jeet Ganguly, the music director whose popular tracks have continually been riding the Bangla soundtrack charts.
The theme song 'Manush manusher jonye...' sung by Usha Uthup and others was apt.
Football quotient:
It is suffice to say that the audience lapped up the match proceedings enthusiastically regardless of the quality of football played. At the end of the scheduled time the score was 1-1. But in a decisive tie breaker, Filmstars XI won (by 3-2).
Fun trivia: The maximum number of offsides could be credited to Mithun 'Mahaguru' Chakraborty, the most enthusiastic though futile display came from Jayjit, and the one who was there the whole time yet was hardly seen putting his soul in the gameplay was none other than Sourav 'Maharaj' Ganguly.
[Pics: courtesy- Star Ananda, the event broadcaster, banglatorrents.com,
and ilovekolkata.in]
Video footage on
ilovekolkata.in (All rights reserved by the said portal)
URL link:
http://www.ilovekolkata.in/index.php/component/option,com_seyret/Itemid,568/id,1263/task,videodirectlink/
Star blogger's field report: Hiran Chatterjee,
on herohiran.com
(Hiran's official website)
[Finally, my apologies for the use of the term Tollywood,
which is very much in popular use,
and hence I adopted it for lack of a better term in the title of the post;
I am still very much against the use of this corrupted reference and wish I hadn't used it myself.]
