From BCCI Umpire Marcus Couto

The MARINE SPORTS is a name where every sportsman must have visited this shop at Dadar in Mumbai at least once in the last fifty years. From Vijay Merchant to Sunil Gavaskar down to Sachin Tendulkar all have visited this place and havememories of it. Mr.
Theo Braganza has played his part in keeping the sports history of India alive.

For me THEO BRAGANZA is the best brain in this country as far as designing or publication
of books is concerned, I cannot forget his whole hearted help for all my publications
and Cricket ventures. During our matches at Shivaji Park (10 minutes walk) he was kind enough to open his shop so that we few umpires during the breaks could go and pick
some useful umpiring books or umpiring material.

Oh yes, How can I forget. Ricky Couto my brother, Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli during their school days, visited Marine Sports shop regularly in 1989 and turned the pages of the book Wisden, wherein their name was there. They were annoyed when Theo Braganza one fine day, decided to take the book off and keep it in the locker since these
boys used to come and just turn the page and the book pages were getting soiled. I still remember for a few days in anger Vinod used to go near the shop and from outside
call loudly THEOOO and by the time Theo came out Vinod and the group used to vanish.
The next Braganza generation not interested, Television and the internet has made Marine Sports naturally financially weak.

Theo soon will enter into eighties, but his love and sacrifice for the sports, shop and publications still goes on and will go on, like a twenty year old. We know the survival of these spices isn’t easy as these days every reading material is easily available on your palmtop. The core audience of the sixties and seventies were books, then the eighties were about videos, the nineties were into books publications and now, it’s digital. A few books that I hear in demand are about umpiring, Tom Smith’s Cricket Umpiring and Scoring is
a best-seller now although difficult to get from the publishers.

Theo Braganza beside, publishing 1000 of books on sports, has been the Honorary Secretary of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Scorers of India and regularly monitors that the quarterly bulletin - Anka is out. He also arranges a cricket heritage tour of Mumbai and manufactures cricket equipment which are useful for umpires and cricketers. This could be the last bookshop in India dedicated exclusively to books on
sport, I hope Theo has not missed being an engineer nor being a player but should be happy for educating sports lovers with the history of the various games.

All the best and may God grant you goodhealth, so that you continue to serve the game and its sport lovers.

Marcus Couto
BCCI Umpire