Durand Cup
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History
As of 2025
Arjun Sengupta, July 24, 2025: The Indian Express
The 134th edition of the Durand Cup, the oldest extant football tournament outside the British Isles, began in Kolkata.
Established in 1888, Durand Cup was the most prestigious tournament in Indian football until the late twentieth century. Here’s a brief history.
Origins in British Raj
The tournament is named after Sir Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat best known for drawing the contentious international border between British India (now Pakistan) and Afghanistan. Durand instituted the tournament in 1888 as recreation for British troops: the first edition saw the participation of six British and two Scottish regimental teams.
Till 1940, the Durand Cup was held each September in Shimla, the summer capital of the Raj. Matches were played with full military pomp and pageantry in the picturesque meadow of Annandale.
“Smartly attired military bands played tuneful marching tunes before the match and during the interval. Pennants of the participating British regimental teams fluttered in the sun. The Viceroy of India would personally hand over the prizes,” Novy Kapadia, the legendary Indian football writer, wrote in Barefoot to Boots: The Many Lives of Indian Football (2017).
Entry of Indian teams
In 1922, Calcutta-based Mohun Bagan became the first civilian side to take part in the tournament, paving the way for Indian participation. But in these initial years, the mostly barefoot Indian teams could not cope with superior British opposition.
“Realising this, Durand authorities came up with a unique idea in 1937, to have a separate tournament for all teams knocked out in the first round. This competition was known as the Little Durand, or ‘Chhota’ Durand, and was held concurrently with the main tournament,” Kapadia wrote.
Another Calcutta-based club, Mohammedan Sporting, broke the British monopoly on the Durand Cup in 1940, the year the tournament moved to Delhi. In front of a 1,00,000-strong crowd at the Irwin Amphitheatre (now the Major Dhyanchand National Stadium), the team of 11 Muslims beat the Royal Warwickshire Regiment 2-1 in the final.
Tournament’s heyday
After a break due to World War II, Independence, and Partition, the tournament resumed in 1950. Beginning with Dr Rajendra Prasad, a football enthusiast, the President of India took over the role of the erstwhile Viceroy in the final.
“Six Indian Presidents, from Rajendra Prasad to Neelam Sanjiva Reddy graced the Durand final and watched the complete match. During half-time they would have tea with the captains… [and] chat about football and sports…,” Kapadia wrote.
While regimental teams of the Indian Army continued to take part — the Army still plays a central role in organising the Durand Cup — civilian clubs have been more dominant the post-Independence era.
Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, with 17 and 16 wins respectively, have been the most successful teams in the tournament’s history, followed by the Border Security Force team with seven wins. Punjab-based JCT has won five times. The Hyderabad City Police team was a formidable force in the 1950s and early-1960s, with four wins.
1990s onwards
“For about four decades, till the end of the 1980s, the greatness of a player and even clubs was judged by how many Durand finals they had played in and how many Durand titles they had won,” Kapadia wrote.
In the 1990s, attendance at the games, held in the Delhi Gate Stadium (later renamed Ambedkar Stadium), began dropping, which coincided with a general decline in interest in Indian football. The reasons, according to commentators, include the exposure on television to vastly superior foreign leagues, and the surge in the interest in cricket.
As other leagues emerged — notably the I-League in the 1990s and the Indian Super League in the 2010s — big clubs such as Mohun Bagan and East Bengal gradually lost interest, often sending B-teams to Durand, or not sending sides at all.
Since 2019, the tournament has been primarily hosted by Kolkata which remains the bastion of football in India. Although recent editions have managed to attract big sides, Durand nowadays is effectively a glorified pre-season tournament, providing managers an opportunity to fine-tune tactics and players before the domestic season begins.
Title winners
2024
Nilesh Bhattacharya, Sep 1, 2024" The Times of India
Kolkata : In the end, it was a triumph NorthEast United FC seemed to have stolen straight from the page of Mohun Bagan’s script. It was history for them, their cup of joy --pure, maiden and magical. It was their goalkeeper Gurmeet Singh’s turn to do a Vishal Kaith, pulling off two saves in the shootout to seal the deal. It was a what could-have-been moment for Mohun Bagan SG as well.
North East United lifted the Durand Cup --their first trophy since their birth in Indian football a decade ago ---dramatically beating Mohun Bagan 4-3 in penalty shootout after coming back from 0-2 goal down to hold the defending champions 2-2 in regulation time at the Salt Lake Stadium.
And how the Highlanders flourished on a stage which Mohun Bagan seemed to have made a part of their survival gene in this tournament. And how Bagan’s art of escapology failed to bear fruit in the most decisive stage of the tournament. In the back-to back knockout matches leading to the final, Jose Molina’s green-and-maroon brigade made it a habit of surviving against the odds, clawing their way back from the jaws of death against Punjab FC and Bengaluru FC before seeing goalkeeper Vishal Kaith rising to the occasion and keeping his team afloat with two crucial in the penalty shootout on both occasions.
The script underwent a complete change in the final. It was Mohun Bagan who claimed a 2-0 goal lead thanks to Jason Cummings’ penalty in the 11th minute and Sahal Abdul Samad’s first goal of the season four minutes into the first half injury time. Until then, it was smooth sailing for Mohun Bagan and their march to Durand Cup title No. 18 looked like theirs to lose. But NEUFC turned the game on its head in a second-half resuscitation. Their coach Benali’s introduction of Guillermo Fernandez and Louis Macarton paid off handsomely as the Highlanders took the wind out of Bagan’s sails with two goals in a span of three minutes.
