Bachchu bhai passes away

Sirajul Islam Bachchu is no more. The confirmed bachelor of Bangladesh's football breathed his last at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital on Sunday afternoon. He died of kidney diseases. He was 69.

A life member of Wari Club, a former general secretary of the Bangladesh Football Federation who also served as the general secretary of the South Asian Football Federation, Bachchu bhai, as affectionately called by many, was better known to the football aficionados for others reasons than a number of portfolios he occupied.

Born in Jessore in 1946 and graduated from Dhaka University, Bachchu had more than one avenue to choose as a profession. But he decided to marry football and lived a life that a conventional sports organiser, who possesses unbridled passion for the game but very allergic to the drastic changes that an ever-changing world demands, would have normally chosen to live.

He could have been a good artist; he had been enlisted with both BTV and Bangladesh Radio. He was a good writer; he frequently wrote sports articles for Ittefaq, Sangbad, Millat and fortnightly magazine Krira Jagat.

There was not a single publication of the BFF that he was not associated with ever since he joined the organisation in 1991. He received the best organiser's awards by both Bangladesh Sports Journalists Association and Bangladesh Sports Press Association.

He also wrote books on "Laws of Volleyball" and satirical novel "Gadhar Jakhon Buddhi Holo".

But Bachchu, whose body was taken to Wari Club and then to the BFF House last night so that sports-lovers could pay their last respect, would be best remembered for his uncanny ability of smiling back at his hardest critics and for his loyalty to the country's football even in desperate times.

The veteran organiser will be buried at the Karbala graveyard in Jessore today after his second namaz-e-janaza at the district's Eidgah Maidan.