Rugby Championship : Bengal Topples Haryana’s Reign
Bengal’s underdog rugby team stunned eight-time champions Haryana to win the Senior National Rugby 7s Championship 2025 in Guwahati.
Well, slap me sideways with a scrum cap — Bengal have only gone and done it! In what can only be described as a David-walloping-Goliath-with-a-rugby-ball moment, Bengal’s rugby team booted eight-time champions Haryana off their lofty perch at the Senior National Rugby 7s Championship 2025 held in Guwahati. And they did it with the sort of pluck that would make a lion blush.
The showdown at the Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium on April 28 had more drama than a Nandikar theater. Final score? A nail-biting, teeth-gritting 14–12. Bengal scored all their points in the first half, before Haryana — that beefy bunch of six-foot-something powerhouses — huffed, puffed and very nearly blew the house down in the second. But no cigar.
And this isn’t just a sporting win — oh no, it’s the sort of story that would have Sunil Gangopadhyay reaching for his pen. Most of the Bengal lads are alumni of Khelo Rugby by Future Hope, an initiative that transforms street kids into scrum kings. Future Hope, based in Ballygunge, Kolkata, does what it says on the tin — giving the forgotten youth of Bengal a fighting chance, both in sport and in life.
Coach Sanjay Patra, a former India international, summed it up like a true gentleman with a bruised whistle:
“Haryana’s lads are built like brick outhouses. They’ve been the backbone of the national team for yonks. But our boys? They took hits, gave hits, and tackled like their lives depended on it.”
Captain Fantastic Rajdeep Saha led the charge. A Murshidabad lad with the sort of backstory you’d expect in a blockbuster biopic — orphaned at two, raised in an orphanage, and then discovered by none other than Paul Walsh, former British diplomat turned rugby messiah. Walsh, now the guiding force behind Khelo Rugby, seems to have found his calling among Bengal’s rising stars.
“We weren’t the biggest. Not even the fastest. But we were together,” said Saha, who can play just about any position. “It was all about the team. We trained, we adapted, and we gave it everything.”
Then there’s Arpan Chhetri, the silent assassin from Sikkim, who made the pitch his personal playground. Or Akash Balmiki, the fly-half with the brains of a chess master and the reflexes of a mongoose on Red Bull. From a colony tucked behind the police quarters near Bhabani Bhawan, Akash proved that zip codes don’t define zip on the field.
With over 25 states vying for the title, the odds were stacked higher than a Delhi traffic jam. But Bengal weren’t having any of it. They came, they saw, and they drop-kicked convention right out the stadium.
The boys returned to Howrah station early Wednesday, greeted by cheers, garlands and perhaps the odd bewildered commuter wondering what on earth they’d missed. Lav Jhingan, president of the Bengal Rugby-Football Union, couldn’t stop beaming:
“They may have lacked the beef, but by George, they had the brains, the bravery, and the brotherhood.”
And as Sujata Sen, CEO of Future Hope, put it:
“They beat a team that was, quite frankly, built like armoured trucks. But they did it with heart.”
So here’s to Bengal — the underdogs with overachieving hearts, the lads who showed us that muscle might win scrums, but grit wins matches. Someone call the scriptwriters — this one’s headed straight for the big screen.
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