Winning the Santosh Trophy: Mizoram’s sporting star rises in North East

At the southernmost tip of India's north-east, bordered by Bangladesh and Burma, and tethered to India by two slender highways is Mizoram. This tiny state, home to just over a million people, made sporting history on Sunday, winning India's top football tournament, the Santosh Trophy, for the first time. It wasn't easy. For most of the first half, Mizoram battled off a marauding Railways, three times winner and eight times finalist. But after their first goal, the diminutive men from the north-east found their style and ran rings around their rivals, finally winning 3-0.

This was coming. In 2002, a young Shylo Malsawmtluanga was picked up by East Bengal. He became one of the best left wingers in India, and mentor to scores of kids who followed him to play for clubs in Kolkata, Shillong, Goa and Kerala. It helped that state government encouraged the sport back home, some infrastructure was developed and cable TV beamed international matches and let Mizo kids dream. It is now one of the few states to host its own league. Manipur is the only other north-eastern state to have won the trophy, and is now recognised as a sporting powerhouse. Mizoram might go further. After a negotiated settlement with the government, it completely renounced insurgency in 1986, unlike Manipur, where militancy yet rages.