write the character sketch of any e famous player of Nagaland
Answers
Answer:
Talimeren Ao was the first captain of the Indian football team. Fondly known as T Ao, or Tay Ao, or Dr Tay, the Nagaland native has a story that is enriching and legendary.
A footballer and a doctor, he wore both hats with ease. Mohun Bagan Captain and Captain of the India Team, he was the flag-bearer of the Indian Olympic contingent at the 1948 London Games. With the FIFA World Cup fever hitting its zenith, let us remember this football legend who shined with the ball at his feet.
Perhaps one of the most famous Nagas, he was a figurehead of India’s football history, and his name is resonant in the collective memory of the people. In fact, he has two football tournaments in his name.
Dr Talimeren Ao, from Nagaland, was India's first football captain. Image Credit: Wikipedia
Dr Talimeren Ao, from Nagaland, was India’s first football captain. Image Credit: Wikipedia
Today, we have the IFL, the high-profile Indian Football League, where a team called the NorthEast United dominates the points table. Well, Dr Talimeren Ao was the region’s first footballing hero.
Standing at 5 ft 10 inches, Dr Ao was an athletic–the perfect form for football. A dominating midfielder and defender for nine seasons at Mohun Bagan, from 1943 to 1952, he was a teammate of Sailen Manna and Taj Mohammed at the London Olympics. In photographs, one can easily make out Dr Ao, with his steady gaze.
Born in 1918 in Changki, an Ao village in the then Naga Hills district of Assam, and now in Nagaland’s Mokokchung district, his tribe, the Aos, are one of the 16 tribes of Nagaland. Dr Ao’s father was Subongwati Ningdangri, the first Reverend in the Naga Hills. Dr Ao was the fourth of his 12 kids.
Two or three years after T Ao was born, the family moved to the Impur mission compound, near Mokokchung town, to a house allotted by American missionaries. Near the house was a field where boys would play with a ball made of tightly-tied rags. This was where T Ao had his first brushes with the game.
During this period, the Reverend, his father, died of typhoid.
His last wish? To see Talimeren become a doctor, to serve the Naga people.
In 1933, T Ao was sent to the Jorhat Mission School where he was first exposed to proper football, his skills noticed by both students and teachers.
From Jorhat, Ao went to Guwahati, to join the Cotton College, in 1937. This is when his game levelled up. During this time, Assam’s largest football club, the Maharana Club, had players who trained at a maidan near the Cotton College, and T Ao joined them in their sessions.
Already playing for Cotton College as a striker, he went on to become his Alma Mater’s sports secretary. Ao asked to join the Assamese club, and they let him in.
At the club, Ao changed. From a striker, he was put into the defender/midfielder position, one which he would retain throughout his life. During his time at Maharana, Ao exhibited brilliant footballing skills and commendable sportsmanship. He kept improving his game, but his father’s last wishes stayed firm in his mind. He kept trying for medical seats in colleges, and in 1942, his second attempt secured one of two reserved seats for erstwhile undivided Assam, at the Carmichael Medical College in Kolkata.
In Kolkata, T Ao’s old friend from Maharana Club, Sarat Das, who was then playing for Mohun Bagan, brought him over to the club’s tent. T Ao paid a joining fee and was inducted into the legendary West Bengal Club’s squad, as a defender.
Explanation:
Remembering a Naga doctor-footballer who led India in the 1948 Olympics
Dr T. Ao played for the love of the game. But the impact he left behind on the sport in the North East and its society are still being felt.
It was the last week of November, and Dimapur was dry, dusty, and chilly in the mornings and evenings. The 19th Dr T. Ao inter-district football tournament had got under way the day I reached this crowded commercial hub at the foothills of Nagaland, and I watched Phek district beat a somewhat overconfident Mokokchung district (the previous year’s champions) 2-0 in the opening match at the Dimapur District Sport Council stadium. At the venue were several black-and-white hoardings, blown-up from old photographs, of the late Dr T. Ao taking to the field at the 1948 Olympics as the captain of independent India’s first national football team.
I met Akok Tally, the second of the late Dr Talimeren Ao’s four children, two days later at his residence in a large, tree-filled compound on the outskirts of Dimapur, to talk about his father’s life. The plot was allotted to his father by the Nagaland government in 1970, when it was unclassified forest land. Tally, 56, runs a school started by his father in the compound, and named after his grandfather, the Reverend Subongwati Ningdangri.
Talimeren Ao was born in 1918 in Changki, an Ao village in the then Naga Hills district of Assam and now in Nagaland’s Mokokchung district. The Aos are one of the 16 tribes of Nagaland. The First World War had just ended, and as the members of the Naga labour corps who had been recruited by the British for service in France returned home there were the first stirrings of change: a greater awareness of the outside world and the vexed question of Naga identity