The Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup

Hyderabad, Jan. 5: The Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup, once India’s premier domestic cricket tournament but long banished to the fringes, has suffered a humiliating blow in its centenary year.

A laboratory test has shown that the winners’ trophy is not made of pure gold as always claimed but is an alloy of silver and copper with less than 10 carat gold. The State Bank of Hyderabad now says the cup is worth just Rs 90,000 rather than Rs 4-5 crore as was believed.

The Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) had the current cup made in the early 1960s after winners Maharajkumar of Vizianagaram’s XI refused to part with the original. Vizzy’s team had won the tournament three times straight, and a tradition prevalent then entitled him to hang on to the trophy.

It’s not yet clear whether the cup that was tested was indeed the 1960s cup, which had never been tested before, or whether it was a fake that was substituted sometime in the past five decades.

The cup is kept in a State Bank of Hyderabad locker round the year and is only brought out, under police escort, during the tournament. After the final, the winners are handed a replica and the cup goes back to the locker. The last time the tournament was held was in September 2010.

The Moin-ud-Dowla Gold Cup in its heyday regularly featured top Indian cricketers such as C.K. Nayudu and Lala Amarnath and even foreign stars like Jack Hobbs, Herbert Sutcliffe and Learie Constantine. It was a launch pad for the likes of Vijay Merchant, whose 157 in 1931 earned him a mention in cricket bible Wisden and brought him into Test contention.

By all accounts, the club-based invitational tournament offered spectators better cricket than the quadrangulars and pentangulars. But it was gradually replaced as the leading domestic competition by the Ranji Trophy, started in 1934, although it continued to attract top players like Sunil Gavaskar, G.R. Vishwanath and Kapil Dev.

Even the Sachin Tendulkars and Rahul Dravids have participated in it but since being turned into a limited-overs tournament in 1992, it hardly makes national sports pages any more.

The tournament was born in 1911 but came of age only when it was restarted in 1928 after a halt that began with the First World War. In 1931, Nawab Moin-ud-Dowla donated a gold cup, or what was assumed to be one, which was later claimed by Vizzy. Then the HCA got a new one made at a cost of Rs 7,000, claiming it was pure gold.

P.R. Man Singh, a former HCA secretary, said the cup was evaluated in 1968 by the then state association president, Jayawant Rao, who was a deputy general manager with the State Bank of Hyderabad.

“It was said to weigh 2.75kg and its price was assessed at Rs 2.75 lakh, at the then rate of Rs 100 per tola (roughly 11 grams) of gold. At the present market rate of Rs 19,000 per tola, the cup’s price should have been Rs 4 crore (actually, Rs 4.75 crore).”

But the bank, which charges a Rs 60,000 annual rent for the cup locker, somehow had doubts after the latest edition of the tournament in September. It weighed the cup and found it to be 1.8kg and not 2.75kg.

Following this, the HCA got it tested by the National Geophysical Research Institute, an arm of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

Man Singh has demanded a government probe. HCA president Arshad Ayub said: “Only a thorough probe will reveal the truth. It’s very difficult to blame anyone now.”