With love, from Tendulkar to Maradona

Sachin Tendulkar may not have been able to come down to Kolkata to catch up with the legendary Diego Maradona, but the master blaster did send a token of remembrance across to Maradona.

Sachin Tendulkar may not have been able to come down to Kolkata to catch up with the legendary Diego Maradona, but the master blaster did send a token of remembrance across to Maradona. Tendulkar — an avid Maradona fan himself — sent over a self-autographed soccer ball to the organisers, which was handed over to the Argentine during his weekend Kolkata trip.

Tendulkar is learnt to have personally handed over the football to CPI(M) parliamentarian Shamik Lahiri, who played a key role in organising Maradona’s trip. Lahiri, in turn, handed over the football to Maradona, and gave him a lowdown of how big Tendulkar is in Indian sports.

Interestingly, Tendulkar had specifically requested organisers to keep the news under wraps and not publicise it. Meanwhile, the organisers are still clueless over Sourav Ganguly’s absence from Saturday’s exhibition match. “We had invited Sourav, and we were surprised to see he couldn’t come over. Sourav is an ardent football fan and he would have loved it,” one of the organisers said.

Auction for charity

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Maradona’s parting shot was a donation of over a million rupees as his memorabilia went under the hammer, with the proceeds going to the Indian Football School (IFS) of Maheshtala. Maradona laid the foundation stone of the academy on Saturday.

Five jerseys, four footballs and two photographs were auctioned. One of the photographs with his personal emblem got a winning bid price of Rs 80,000, while a jersey worn by the Argentine great during his playing days was bought for Rs 1,10,000.

A Boca Juniors No. 10 jersey got a winning bid price of Rs 80,000 as Dhananjay Singh made the highest bid. He returned to the dais to collect a photograph of the ‘Hand of God’ for Rs 2,00,000.