The Bombay Gymkhana had organized a Lawyers’ Football Championship on October 8 - 9, 2011, in which various Mumbai law firms participated. Amarchand & Mangaldas won the Championship and lifted the Chagla Cup after beating 15 other teams.

The Cup has been named after the first Indian Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court and is instituted by his son, Senior Counsel Iqbal Chagla.

On October 8, group qualifying matches were held with a total of 16 teams (which included 15 law firms from Mumbai and the Bombay Bar Association team representing the ‘Counsels’). The tournament consisted of four different groups and each of these groups consisted of four teams.

Amarchand was placed in the same group as Little & Co., Desai & Diwanji and Kanga & Co. Amarchand topped the group with 7 points.

On October 9, Quarters, Semifinals and Final matches were held. For the championship, the first Semifinal was held between Wadia Ghandy and Amarchand; while the second was fought between Bombay Bar Association and DSK Legal.

The final for the Championship was played between Amarchand and Bombay Bar Association, in which Amarchand prevailed over the Bombay Bar Association in a thrilling final.  

Plate matches were played between 8 teams which failed to qualify in the group qualifying matches. In the Plate final Mulla & Mulla played against Desai & Diwanji, in which Mulla & Mulla emerged victorious.     

Amarchand team included Manu Varghese (GK), Sagarnil Banerjee, Jay Sanklecha, Tanmay Patnaik, Rohan Banerjee, Animesh Bisht (Captain), Eshan Sharma, Kenichi Sekiguchi, Pranay Chandran, Vikrant Patwardhan and Abhinav Maker.

It is a good initiative taken up by the organizers to bring the legal fraternity together!

Earlier, Bar & Bench had also reported about lawyers playing the Lawyer’s Cricket World Cup.