In an unprecedented incident on Thursday in Kolkata Premier Football league, Tollygunge Agragami, the team which has been struggling to come out of relegation from the Premier division this season, has been alleged of participating in a ‘fixed’ match against Southern Samity at East Bengal ground on Thursday.
Tollygunge Agragami, requiring a minimum of 12 points to survive from the relegation, has defeated Southern Samity by four goals and already garnered eight points from their six outings. But the spectators at East Bengal ground were simply astonished to have watched that there was no player of the first eleven, fielded by Southern Samity.
According to rule, 20 players are scheduled to sit on the reserve bench during any match. But it was observed that only 16 players of Southern Samity looked seating on the bench in Thursday’s match. More importantly, coach of Southern Samity, Subrata Bhattacharya was absent in such a crucial match on the day! When asked about his absence in Thursday’s match, Subrata Bhattacharya said over phone, “Surprisingly I was asked by our club officials not to go to the ground on Thursday.”
Interestingly, the experts in Maidan are viewing this match as the war between two heavyweight Trinamul Congress leaders. Arup Biswas, the state minister in charge of sports is the president of Tollygunge Agragami while Ratan Dey who is the president of Southern Samity, is an MLA of the ruling party.
And according to the experts, they already had a smell that Tollygunge Agragami would be desperate to buy points for its remaining four matches in the Kolkata premier league by organizing the matches fixed. Tollygunge Agragami president Arup Biswas could not be contacted for his comments.
But Technical Director of the team, renowned coach Subhash Bhowmick refuted the allegations commenting, “We were showing competitive performance since we lost against Mohun Bagan. But the boys were simply not being able to score. Against Southern, the boys got the goals. And I do not know whether the match had been fixed!”