For Swapan Ball, East Bengal was family and the club home

There are many stories about Swapan Ball’s almost visceral disgust for the colours green and maroon. My favourite one, recounted by the man himself, was about how he preferred standing at an airport departure lounge for hours while everyone around sat and waited out the delay in a flight to Kolkata.

“How could I sit in chairs that had green covers,” Ball had said. To anyone who knew him, it would have made perfect sense. For Ball, anything, however symbolic, that represented Mohun Bagan was anathema.

Ball died here in the early hours of Friday after fighting cancer. He was 71 and is survived by wife, two daughters and their families.

Ball was a footballer of some standing playing as goalkeeper for East Bengal’s development teams in the 1950s and 60s but to the world of football in India, Ball was, for over three decades, an East Bengal official for whom the club was family. He was also the team’s manager. He was always seen on the bench exhorting players, willing to take on the world if he felt it had gone against East Bengal. Before agents took over players’ interest in India, Ball would scour the domestic circuit and negotiate with outstation players.

And he had a way with statistics. Before journalists could Google their way out of trouble, Ball was their go-to man for information.

Ball loved the quintessentially Bengali “adda”, usually with sundowners or three, which he would often enrich with baritone rendition of Bangla songs of yore.

With his passing, a part of East Bengal and the Kolkata Maidan has been immortalised. As long as East Bengal exist, the memory of Ball chewing on a cigarette as he holds forth will remain alive.