Bandya Kakade, former India football goalkeeper, passed away here on Wednesday evening. A close family friend said 67-year-old Kakade died of a heart attack.
Kakade and Kuppuswami Sampath (MEG, Bangalore) were the two goalkeepers of the Indian team that won the bronze medal at the 1970 Bangkok Asian Games. Kakade was also part of the Indian team (the others two goalkeepers were Tarun Basu and S.C. Sudhir) that took part in the qualifiers for the 1972 Munich Olympics.
He was a teammate of illustrious players like Sudhir Karmakar, N. Ulaganathan, Samson Gunapandian, Gurdev Singh, Shankar Banerjee, S.G. Dastidar, Mohammad Habib, Doraisawamy Natraj, Magan Singh, Syed Nayeemuddin, Shyam Thapa, Subhas Bhomick, Amar Bahadur and Manjir Singh. He has played under coach G.M.H. Basha of Mysore, and Bengal’s P.K. Banerjee.
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Kakade was known for accurate and nicely executed looping balls of goal kicks to unmarked teammates in the rival half. He played for Central Railway, Mafatlal and Tatas. “Bandya replaced me in Tatas. He was stylish, acrobatic, aggressive and nice to watch. He came up the hard way and was a friend of mine. I met him two years ago at the Bhatia Hospital when he suffered a paralytic attack,’’ said S.S. ‘Babu’ Narayan, India’s double-olympian goalkeeper at Melbourne (1956) and Rome (1960).