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Shambazar Tennis Club was born at a time when the elite of Bengal, on the one hand joined Gandhiji's Non-Cooperation Movement and on the other, were imbibing some of the best values and traditions of their ruler, such as building institutions like sporting and recreational clubs. It was in 1921 when the Calcutta Improvement Trust threw open the grounds of the Deshbandhu Park in North Calcutta for various sports and games that three clubs were founded by the sports loving people of the city. These were Athelete Union Club, the City Club and the Shamlal Sporting Club, which amalgamated and formed the present Shambazar Tennis Club, having only one Tennis lawn. Late Rai Bahadur Debendranath Ballav was the first President and Shri Annada Charan Bose, the Honorary Secretary.
To start with, the club functioned from the residence of the Honorary Secretary as it did not have the permission of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation to raise any structure in the park area. It was, however, allowed later to raise a pavilion when Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was the Chief Executive Officer of the Calcutta Corporation. At this time, Shri Pulin Behari Sawoo, a councillor was the Honorary Secretary. Only in 1928, the tarpaulin tent was replaced by a brick built structure.
In the early thirties, members of the 'Patrika' house (Amrita Bazar Patrika) some of whom became Life Members, took keen interest in the activities of the Club and the late Tusharkanti Ghosh, by then a veteran journalist, was quite often seen taking his hand in a game of Tennis on the club lawn. Among the many prominent personalities in politics and social life who took great interest in the all round development of the club, mention must be made of the late Nalini Ranjan Sarkar (Mayor of Calcutta Corporation and later a minister at the Centre) and of the late Ashoke Kumar Sarkar (of Ananda Bazar Patrika).
During the ten years following the establishment of the club, there was phenomenal expansion in playing facilities and it boated of six lawns in 1927 and a sizeable membership. While the club held annual members' tournament from 1924, an Open Tournament was organised from 1927 and a Junior Event was introduced in 1931. All these events were a major attraction of all tennis players of the city. Well known tennis players, some of whom were Davis Cuppers, have taken part in these tournaments. Mathew, Madan Mohan, Sohanlal, S. Akhtar Ali, Sumant Misra, Dilip Bose, Naresh Kumar, Narendra Singh, Premjit Lal, Jaideep Mukherjee, S. Minotra and Vijay Amritraj. The club also staged Bengal State Lawn Tennis Championships in 1961, 1973 and 1975. Vijay Amritraj, then at the top of his form - won the State Championship on the Shambazar lawns in 1973.
About this time, club management throught of providing facilities for bringing out young talents in the game and arranged to have young boys coached under the Rajkumari Amrit Kaur Scheme. Dilip Bose, the first Asian Champion, looked after the coaching for sometime but the scheme was abandoned for want of funds.
In 1973, however, the then Honorary Secretary, Shri B.G. Mustafi thought of a comprehensive scheme for coaching up young boys and girls. Letters were sent to the various schools of North Calcutta for enlisting young students for coaching. The response was encouraging. The scheme was inaugurated with 50 boys and girls by the then West Bengal Minister-in-charge of sports, Shri Prafulla Kanti Ghosh, himself a keen tennis player. S. Akhtar Ali, National Coach and Premjit Lal, ex-Davis Cup player had conducted two coaching clinics within the club premises.
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