THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: For Lieutenant Colonel Goda Varma Raja, sports was without doubt a way of life. Being a pioneer in many sporting activities in the state which deservedly earned him the title of the ‘father of sports’ in Kerala, Raja was a ‘sportsman among the princes as well as a prince among the sportsmen’.
Born into the Travancore Royal Family, Raja took extra care in ensuring that the youth in the state took up a sport, whichever discipline it was.
“When I went to the Trivandrum Tennis Club (TTC) as a nine-year-old in the early 1940s, it was ‘Thirumeni’ who gifted me the racket and even taught me a few strokes during the wall practice,” recollects Gopalakrishnan Nair, now one of the seniormost members of the TTC.
Nair remembers that Raja would attend to all the trainees in person and would even take them with him for a vacation while the royal family spent the summer at Peerumedu hill station.
“He was that close to the club, its members and trainees,” he talks of the qualities that have endeared the life president of TTC to the masses.
Raja wanted to make the TTC the premier tennis coaching institute in the country.
“He would invite winners of championships from across the state to come and practice at the TTC,” Nair says. One of them was Ramanathan Krishnan, who would go on to become a legend in Indian tennis.
“When I was 13, Colonel offered me to cover all my expenses including training and education if I would shift to Thiruvananthapuram. In the end, it was my father who decided to stay put in Madras,” the two-time Wimbledon semifinalist has said.
Raja was such a visionary that he managed to fly in Wimbledon champion Bill Tilden and Henry Crochet to play an exhibition match in the city as early as 1936. This led to the formation of the TTC and the Thiruvananthapuram Tennis Association in 1940. This became the Thiru-Kochi Lawn Tennis Association in 1950 and then the Kerala Lawn Tennis Association in 1956 when the state of Kerala was formed.
Raja would also go on to become the president of the All India Tennis Association in 1966. However, it was not just in tennis that Raja was engaged in. Cricket was his second love. He played a big role in the formation of the Kerala Cricket Association and served as its president from 1950 to 63, and also became the first office-bearer from Kerala in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), serving as its vice-president.
The Kerala State Sports Council was formed in 1954 due to his efforts and he was its president from 1954 till his death in 1971. Raja also founded the Kerala Table Tennis Association in 1940, Kerala Aquatic Association in 1953, Kerala Rifle Association in 1957 and the Kerala Mountaineering Association in 1961.
In football, he helped organise the Santosh Trophy in Kerala in 1956 and then the Asian Cup qualifying matches, participated by Israel, Iran, Pakistan and India, at the Maharaja’s College Ground in Kochi in 1959. He was also pivotal in forming the Trivandrum Golf Club Committee and the establishment of the Roller Skating Ring and Sreepadam Stadium in Attingal. Raja was the first physical education director of the Travancore University and helmed the conduct of the Thiru-Kochi swimming competitions in 1953.
Raja died in a plane mishap in 1971 in Kulu valley while he was attending a meeting of the All India Sports Council at the age of 63, leaving behind a huge vacuum in the field of sports not only in the state but also the country.
IN MEMORIAM
➤ Government G V Raja Residential Sports School, Mylam, Thiruvananthapuram
➤ The Indoor Recreation Centre in Shanghumukam known as the G V Raja Sports Stadium
➤ G V Raja All India Football Tournament organised by the Thiruvananthapuram District Football Association
➤ G V Raja Awards for Excellence in Sports instituted by the Kerala State Sports Council
➤ October 13, the birth anniversary of G V Raja, is observed as the Kerala Sports Day