Subhas Bhowmick (left) and Surajit Sengupta leave the DD office on Monday

Calcutta: It was a victory of sorts for football in what was being described as a battle between the game and Doordarshan.

Following demand from about a thousand football lovers at the Doordarshan Calcutta station on Monday morning, the national broadcasters have agreed to beam live Wednesday’s AFC Cup match between East Bengal and Malaysia’s Negeri Semblian to be played at Salt Lake Stadium.

It was a unique demonstration-cum-protest gathering, convened primarily by former football stars Subhas Bhowmick and Surajit Sengupta. Doordarshan’s inability (or reluctance) to show live the India-Singapore pre-World Cup tie in Goa on March 18 fuelled this.

Sengupta and IFA secretary Subrata Dutta handed over a memorandum to the Doordarshan station director, saying football is getting “step-motherly treatment” and demanded its due. Among these was live coverage of important matches played in India.

Local Doordarshan officials promised they would forward the letter to the Delhi headquarters at the earliest since “sentiments of so many people” was involved. Later in the evening, an East Bengal official confirmed the green signal from Delhi had arrived.

East Bengal were willing to bear the cost of broadcasting the match on their own and pay up the Rs 3.5 lakh required. An amount of a little more than two lakh had already been sent to Delhi. Later it was learnt that Doordarshan has offered a waiver and demanding Rs 75,000. This news could not be confirmed.

The gathering at the Doordarshan gate featured several leading names from the city’s football fraternity including Sailen Manna, Chuni Goswami, Santo Mitra, Subrata Bhattacharjee, Aloke Mukherjee and Satyajit Chatterjee.

People not directly linked to football like former cricketers Gopal Bose and Sambaran Banerjee, singers Indranil Sen and Saikat Mitra were also present as were officials from several clubs, small, big and sundry. The crowd started gathering at around 9.30 am and dispersed after close to two hours. Traffic movement, from and to Golf Green, was disrupted. Not that too many complained.

Bhutia’s stand

One notable face missing was India captain Bhaichung Bhutia, though many of his East Bengal teammates dropped in after morning practice. Bhutia had his answer ready, nonetheless.

“A player’s job is to play and not go begging to Doordarshan officials to show their matches on TV. Spectators who miss the players on TV should go and hold such demonstrations.

“In any case, it’s not worth going to Doordarshan and demonstrating. But I appreciate the fact that so many former players took up the issue,” he said.