Anthony de Mello (cricket administrator)
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Anthony Stanislaus de Mello (11 October 1900, Karachi, British India – 24 May 1961, Delhi, India) was an Indian cricket administrator and one of the founders of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
Born in Karachi, he was educated in St. Patrick's High School, Sind College and Downing College in Cambridge. He started his career in the services of the businessman R. E. Grant Govan in Delhi, and with whom he collaborated in founding the BCCI.
The BCCI had it origins in a meeting in February 1927 at the Roshanara Club in Delhi between Arthur Gilligan, the captain of the visiting MCC team, De Mello, Grant Govan and the Maharaja of Patiala. The decision to form the board was taken at another meeting held at the same place on 22 November 1927 attended by representatives of various provinces and princely states. De Mello travelled with Grant Govan to England to organise tours of India by South Africa in 1929 and MCC in 1930-31. Both tours were eventually cancelled but the BCCI was formally founded at the Roshanara Club in December 1928 with Grant Govan as the first President and De Mello the Secretary. They represented India in the Imperial Cricket Conference in May 1929.
De Mello, with Grant Govan, was also instrumental in founding the Cricket Club of India (CCI). As for BCCI, De Mello served as the founder secretary. Delhi was planned as the headquarters and location of the ground for the club, but it was eventually set up in Bombay (now Mumbai). Guha considers this as an attempt on the part of De Mello and Grant Govan to shift the headquarters of cricket in India from Bombay, but the book brought out by the CCI for the Golden Jubilee of the Brabourne Stadium attributes this to the non-availability of land in Bombay. But it does seem that De Mello played a prominent role in selecting the site and convincing Lord Brabourne, the Governor of Bombay, to allot the land for the stadium at a cheap rate.
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