Not a Regular FAN

Published in

nicle mind

7 min readMay 14, 2016

There were lots of troll in social media after SRK’s movie FAN was released in April. Photo of a ceiling fan was trending in twitter; saying that you can watch the FAN at home itself.

In this post, I want to introduce a person who is FAN of anything that is sports and now that he has dedicated his life for supporting all kinds of sports. Sugumar never knew he is going to be a big celebrity; while he was performing many fancy dress competition in back in school days in Bangalore. As a school child Sugumar always wanted to participate in cultural activities, specially fancy dress. He won hell lots of prizes at school level. As any other Indian teenager — he started playing cricket in his early age. More importantly started watching cricket in stadium.

Sugumar decided to combine his passion toward cricket and love towards fancy dress. Wife Suma suggested to dress himself up as Mysore Maharaja to the stadium. All he wanted was to show to show the world the diversity of Indian culture and its history along with the love for the game of cricket.

This caught attention of many cameras, when Ravi Sastry announced him from the commentary box; and he has started climbing the steps of fame.

Nokia awarded the fan of the year title to Sugmar in the year 2011; In the same year SRK was the brand ambassador for Nokia. Sugumar met the SRK (on SRK’s request) him ITC Gardenia post a RCB-KKR match in Bangalore. King khan invited him to share the audience chair with him in the red carpet premiere show of RaOne the movie.

Karnataka State Cricket Association choose Sugumar as brand ambassador for their domestic twenty20 version of cricket named as KPL. Sugumar support Hubli Tigers as official fan. Currently he is named as official fan of Royal Challengers Bangalore and is part of the team. He traveled along with Indian cricket team, RCB in many cricket venues to support the game. On the journey he started collecting autographs, souvenirs from cricketers around the world. Now he started giving all those away to children who are enthusiastic about sports.

I got a chance to meet Sugmar, when he arrived as chief guest for the Karate tournament where my son was participating. I have got a half an hour in person talk with the legend; he was so kind enough to give time for the same and a selfie.

He shared about his history, likes, motives, family friends etc during the discussion. Aaryan(my son) is so excited as he promised to give a Virat autographed bat for him. Whether it happens or not; It was an honer for me to talk to him and getting to know about him.

While he is supporting the game and team; there is big support function behind him.He wanted to thank his family, his manager for all the support they are giving him to make regular visits to the stadium and support teams; While not at the stadiums, he works for INDEV GROUP and Mr. Xavier Britto the chairman is an avid cricket fan, hence supporting Sugumar with all the leaves that he takes for this purpose.Most importantly the costumes store — Srinagar Costumes Bangalore; which support his personal tag line — “I do not repeat costumes”.

Now he call himself not just a cricket fan — but ‘all sports fan’ — to wind up the post — rapid fire snippet from talks with him;

Q1: Morning or night owl? [Sugumar] : Morning

Q2: Coffee or Tea? [Sugumar] : Coffee

Q3: First thing in the morning ? [Sugumar] : News Paper

Q4: Wallpaper on the smartphone/computer ? [Sugumar] : Cricket

Q5: Biggested Gift ? [Sugumar] : Family

Q6: Advice to new generation ? [Sugumar] : Be sporty, Be Healthy.

What Next?

They have created an official international cricket fan site http://worldcricketfans.com/

and the latest is — Sugumar is now enagaged with Premier Futsal League, the first-ever multi-national mini version of soccer. Futsal is a 5-a-side shorter variant of soccer with two halves of 20 minutes each. A fast growing sport in India and the world, in India it is governed by Futsal Association of India (FAI) with accreditation from the international governing body; Sugumar is dreaming big in PFL, eagerly looking forward to see his stint with world football celebrities..