The Hindu
August 9, 2004
RUGBY REVIVAL IN THE SOUTH
IT WAS good to see a 15-a-side rugby match in Chennai again after
decades. And it was nice to see a Tamil Nadu team, from the Armed
Police, emerge champions in the qualifiers for the Nationals, beating
the multinational Bangalore Rugby Football Club. With the Sports
Development Authority of Tamil Nadu encouraging the efforts of the
Tamil Nadu Rugby Football Union, the game is fast spreading in the
city and promises to spread in the mofussil too with the SDAT’s
backing.
Responsible for bringing rugby back to Madras – and helping it
establish itself in Bangalore, Pondicherry and, soon, Hyderabad – is
Patrick Davenport, a fast-talking, hard-selling American businessman
who has settled in Madras. Yes, American, and one who says it is a
game quite popular now in American universities that produce a
national team that must rate amongst the top 15 in the world.
Davenport himself played for the University of Detroit and has been
passionate about the game since. Today, he’s got about half a dozen
teams regularly playing rugby in Madras and has got about 25 schools,
including 15 corporation schools, to take to the game. Teaming with
Davenport in spreading the game in the city is the president of the
TRFU, Mohan Krishna, and technical director Emil Vartazarian, a
Calcutta Armenian who is probably the best player in the country.
The pity of this passion is that the institution that gave South
India rugby is showing no interest at all in the game. The Madras
Gymkhana Rugby Football Challenge Cup was instituted in 1900 and was
once competed for every October during what was known as the Madras
Rugger Week, teams coming down from the Anamalais, the High Range,
Nilgiris, Wynaad and Bangalore to play and frolic. The Gymkhana also
used to host the All India every few years till, if I remember right,
1954, fielding a team every year in the tournament. By the 1960s,
however, the Gymkhana Club began to take a new view of itself, and
rugby vanished from the Madras scene, leaving it to Calcutta and
Bombay to manfully struggle to keep the game alive in the country.
That struggle has begun to pay off – and the game is enjoying an
all-India revival with a dozen States taking to it.
Remembering Arbuthnot
Though the Gymkhana Club was responsible for keeping Rugby alive in
South India for over 50 years, the beginnings of the game were less
formal. Those beginnings were on The Island where Alexander
Arbuthnot, just out of Rugby School and Haileybury, introduced soon
after his arrival in 1842 the game his old school had invented. He
had introduced the game in Haileybury too the institution which
turned out cricket-playing Civilians for Indian service. Alick’
Arbuthnot was another one of those cricketers and made an even bigger
contribution to South India when he founded the Madras Cricket Club
in 1846. But Alick Arbuthnot’s greatest contribution to the
Presidency was an institution which serendipitously finds mention
elsewhere in today’s column; as Director of Public Instruction he
played a major role in establishing the University of Madras.
In 1858, Arbuthnot delivered the first Convocation Address of the
University and Thamotharampillai and Visuvanathapillai would have
received their sheepskins from him. In 1871, he became the
Vice-Chancellor of the University whose details he had helped to work
out. In 1878, he became the Vice Chancellor of the University of
Calcutta, after, in the years in-between, having served as the Chief
Secretary and, for a few months, Acting Governor of Madras. It’s
quite a contribution he made to Madras between 1842 and 1872, but
none of it nor the man is remembered.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress