Amal Dutta: The Diamond of Indian Football
July 10, 2016. It was late evening at Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport when a message from an acquaintance in Calcutta flashed across my phone: “Amal Dutta has passed away.” During my career as a football journalist, I had met him only twice. Before meeting him in 2015, we had spoken once over the phone from Delhi’s Indian Express office—back in the halcyon days of sports journalism, when athletes and coaches had no qualms about being interviewed over the phone. I had first contacted Amalda in the summer of 2002 for a topic only he could do justice to—India’s failure to qualify for FIFA World Cups, contrasted with China’s maiden entry onto the global stage in 2002. The following year, I met him briefly in Calcutta during a posting. As a journalistic courtesy, I had couriered him a copy of the Indian Express. What struck me most was his generosity and humbleness. Months later, I received a hand-written letter from him recalling our interview. I was thrilled—no oth...