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Novy Kapadia

Author And Sports Commentator

Mr. Novy Kapadia is a versatile sports commentator and analyst for both radio and television. Football is his forte but he maintains the same level of excellence in other sports and in both Hindi and English. His book Barefoot to Boots—The Many Lives of Indian Football published by Penguin was released in September 2017. Later it was released by the President of FIFA, Gianni Infantino at Kolkata during the U-17 World Cup in October 2017. It is the first book in India to deal with the legacy of Indian football from 1888 till 2017.

His earlier book The Football Fanatic’s Essential Guide, A History of the World Cup, 1930—2014, published by Hachette India was released in May 2014. An updated version of this book, known as The Football Fanatic’s Essential guide, 2018 World Cup Special, which includes information on the 2018 World Cup in Russia, was released by Hachette in May 2018.

His other sports books are Enduring legacy Parsis of the 20th century, edited by Dr. Nawaz Mody,  Volume IV—Sports and Cricket, January 2006  and Sporting Legacies in India: Mohun Bagan’s 1911 Football victory versus Olympic Hockey Medals, published in Fields of Play: Sport, Literature and Culture, Orient Blackswan 2015.

At present, Novy is a football and sports columnist with The Asian Age, The Week, Deccan Chronicle, Sportstar, and Economic Times, editor of the Durand football journal and Consultant to the Limca Book of Records. He won the Wills Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism in 1986 for his article "The Other Side of the Medal" published in Business Standard, October 1984 and in The Telegraph.  He worked as a Sports correspodent for The Telegraph from 1982 till 2005 and for Sportsworld magazine from 1980 till 2000.

Novy has done commentary or covered several reputed international sports events, which include every World Cup football tournament from 1982 ---2018, every Asian games from 1982—2018, the 2000, 2008 and 2012 Olympics and every Commonwealth Games from 1998—2018 and other reputed tournaments like World Cup hockey tournaments, Champions Trophy hockey tournaments, Azlan Shah Hockey tournament in Malaysia, SAF Games and SAFF Championships.

He was a member (Special Invitee) Monitoring Committee of the Union Ministry for Sports and Youth Affairs in 2014 and 2018 to select candidates for the annual Droancharya and Dhyan Chand awards and Life time Dronacharya awards.

Novy was the Deputy Proctor of the University of Delhi, Deputy Chairperson of the Sports Board of the University of Delhi and retired as an Associate Professor and Convener of the Department of English, SGTB Khalsa College. His area of interest is the Parsi Novel and Indian Writing in English. He is the author of over thirty –six research papers in reputed journals and books, has spoken at over a dozen national and international literary conferences held in different cities in India and has himself published over a dozen books on Literature.