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100 years old, 25 years homeless
Celebrating its centenary recently was the second oldest sports club in Madras, the South Indian Athletic Association, but it still remains homeless, in a rented premises since 1977 when the Central Government took over the once-splendid Moore Pavilion and grounds behind the Nehru Stadium for Railway use. Functioning in a portion rented from the Victoria Public Hall, the SIAA keeps wondering when it will be able to again get grounds and facilities of its own like it once had.
Founded in 1901 by the Commissioner of the Corporation Lt. Col. Sir George Moore and Fred Rogers to promote Indian participation in Western sport, the SIAA is today more active in promoting tournaments in billiards and snooker, ball badminton, carrom, chess, football, hockey, tennis, table tennis and volleyball, than competing at the highest levels. No more are the days when Ramesh Krishnan played tennis for the Club, V. Baskaran hockey and Syed Habib and T. V. Gupta billiards and snooker.
Sir George Moore, its founder-president, laid the foundation stone in 1902 for the pavilion to be named after him and developed a beautiful lawn in front of it as well as lush green playing areas in the 28 grounds that were allotted to the Club in People's Park. That year, the SIAA organised Madras's first football league and two years later a major knockout tournament. In 1924, it organised the Rajah of Jatprole's Football Tournament, which is still an annual fixture in the city's football calendar. That was the year Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar became the SIAA's first Indian president.
The SIAA has a proud record of pioneering competition in several sporting activities. It was the first promoter of boxing in India when in 1903, it organised the first boxing tournament to be held in the country with Indian participation. The next year it conducted the first All India Amateur Billiards Tournament.
Other tournaments it launched were a tennis tournament in 1906 that continues annually, a cricket tournament in 1909, a hockey tournament in 1922 that from 1925 has been held for the Willingdon Cup, a table tennis tournament in 1923, a ball badminton championship from 1929, a volleyball tournament in 1934 and a women's hockey tournament in 1939.
However, more than sport, what the SIAA was best associated with was the annual Park Fair and Carnival of Sports that was one of the highlights of the Christmas-New Year holiday season in Madras, particularly during the years between the Wars.
Entrusted with the task of running the Fair in 1901 by the Corporation, which had many years earlier got it going in People's Park with the help of a citizens' committee, the SIAA ran it till 1977, by which time a more sophisticated, post-1960s City audience began to show less and less interest in it and ensure the winding up of all the fun of the fair.
One of the highlights of the Fair was the thrilling rekla-racing (light, racing horse-buggies known as reklas were the main attraction, but the supporting card included a variety of other carts drawn by horse and bull). Another attraction was the freestyle wrestling that long preceded the WWF's television tamasha. Hungarian King Kong and Harbans Singh fought many a crowd-pulling bout in the late 1930s and 1940s.
In later years, Dara Singh was the draw. Sadly, all of it has passed, but it the SIAA ever gets a new ground of its own again, maybe the city will see all the fun of a Park Fair again.
S. MUTHIAH
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