Former Indian cricket captain Saurav Ganguly and Bollywood star Mithun Chakraborty along with several other film and television actors played a soccer match to raise funds for the victims of Cyclone Aila on Sunday.

 

The Vidyasagar stadium at Barasat, 30 km from Calcutta, was packed with 25,000 people as the stars managed to raise Rs.2.5 million for donation to the chief minister's relief fund. State Sports Minister Subhas Chakraborty also made an announcement of another Rs.1 million for the fund from his department.

 

Ganguly, whose first love was soccer before he took up cricket seriously, led the television star XI and delighted the crowd with his soccer sense and dribbling, but missed two golden chances by a whisker before finding the net in the tie-breaker.

 

Chakraborty led the film stars XI that won 4-2.

 

Several stars from the Bengali film industry including Rituparna Sengupta, Koel Malluick and Sreelekha Mitra cheered the players while Jishu Segnupta, Abhishek Chatterjee and Rudranee were in the team.

 

The fun-filled evening’s charm was enhanced by singer Usha Uthup with her popular numbers and Mithun emulated Michael Jackson's 'moonwalk' much to the spectators' delight.

 

The cyclone has created havoc in 13 of the 19 districts of West Bengal from May 25-26, leaving a trail of destruction with houses leveled, trees uprooted, power cables snapped and 138 lives lost. Around 6.1 million people have been affected by this cyclone.