This has been coming of age for Bollywood or Hindi film industry. Content has been innovative of late and last decade or two have seen script writers venture out in uncharted territories and even started to churn out various stories, number of them having sports as its central theme. Sports and movies are the two wheels on which Indian entertainment vehicle is balanced primarily. Most Indians have been known to worship the Gentlemen’s game, they have always had their fantasies in rattling out the stats of the sports and sportsmen they adore.
One might wonder why I am saying this at this time. What’s the occasion? March 4th is when another movie Jhund debuts in glitterati. Jhund is a movie based on football (soccer) and how a team from the slums is assembled and coached by the man larger than life in Indian movies – Mr. Bachchan who yet again has been given another opportunity to showcase his skills in an envious portfolio that continues to get bigger. Enough has been written about the legend so that is for another day. Another one Jersey is back to the nation’s favorite sport and is releasing mid-April. This features Shahid Kapoor.
Let’s not digress and stay on course for sports movies. There have been number of sports in the world – cricket, soccer, tennis, field hockey, kabaddi among the first benchers of subcontinental team sports and badminton, chess, wrestling, boxing amongst the equivalents of individual/smaller team sports. Movies have been made on topics pertaining to these sports and which is what I would like to throw upon. Recent past suggests Indians prefer biopics which are more nonfiction than fiction. Indians have always been hero worshippers and reveled in telling the tales that have passed on the ages to become folklores. One closer look at an Indian home and two of the tales that every kid was regaled with while being put to bed were the stories from India’s two most popular books – The Ramayana and The Mahabharat. Too bad these books never made to the best seller lists. Similarly, hearsay sports stories also make it on the day when the grandma lets grandpa does the talking.
Cricket being the most favorite child has benefited from some of the better sports themed movies of late coming out of Indian stable and two of their more successful ones have again been nonfiction – 83 and M.S. Dhoni, not counting Sachin, a Billion Dreams which was more of a documentary. The other two 83 and MS Dhoni have their roots of two of the greatest events in Indian sports history – winning cricket world cup. Lagaan was among the better fiction movie and was laced with humor on the initial history of the game in India. Movies like Azhar (made on the infamous match fixing scandal and the man who orchestrated that in India, kind of fall from grace movie), Jannat, Kai Po Chhe and some of the older movies such as All Rounder would round up cricketing portfolio. Even women’s cricket has thrown its name in the ring and Shabaash Mitthu (on Mithali Raj) and movie on Jhulan Goswami are in the works. There have been more fictional ones like Patiala House, Iqbal, Zoya Factor, Dhishoom which all had cricket woven in their stories.
India’s national game field hockey the sole reason for India’s increased gold output in the Olympics for decades can stake a claim to three good movies related to the sport and all 3 of them were inspired by true events. On one hand, it was subdued Shah Rukh Khan in his Mir Ranjan Negi avatar first losing the game against the archrivals and then redeeming himself as the coach who brought glory to Akshay Kumar’s movie named Gold in the pursuit for the medal at the first Olympics as newly minted nation in 1948 and beating England in its own den to the story of India’s superfast drag flicker Sandeep Singh who had been paralyzed waist down while taking an accidental bullet and the resilience he showed in bouncing back as the fastest drag flicker. These were three fairly good fictional accounts of non-fictional stories and these movies were laden with desi tadka of emotions and scenes written to tear up Indians.
If SRK did the hockey movie, the other two Khans were not to be left behind – both the khans slugging it out in the India’s rustic sport – wrestling and if the intelligent Khan Aamir was the daddy dearest who coached/inspired his daughters to the victory in the yet another fictional non-fiction Dangal then the strong man Khan who was yet again the big brother sultan in the wrestler turned Mixed Martial Arts star who brought his Indian earthiness to the fore while turning the screw on the best in the world.
Soccer hasn’t had much of Indian representation in the movies and only Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal was a recent one. Penalty the Netflix movie had garnered some good praise but again soccer like India’s fortunes with the sport, though it is extremely popular to watch it is nowhere close to the on field performance in this case, on screen performance.
India’s other original sport Kabaddi has recently seen a movie Panga and there was movie Hu Tu Tu which was based on the same topic but none of them set the box office ablaze and hence did not get the requisite eyeballs. Indians have been also good at Billiards and Snooker and some at Squash but barring couple of scenes in a movie, they haven’t been the centerpiece. Shooting had Abhinav Bindra bring home the coveted hardware and from what I read, they are making his biopic featuring the father-son Kapoors Anil and Harshvardhan. Newest hero Neeraj Chopra will have his biopic and am sure producers are lining up on both sides of the road. Kho-kho has been another of Indian “sport” and that could be a topic that might pique a writer’s interest though there has a been a movie of that name for the sport but haven’t seen or read much to opine.
Chess is another of those games that had a classic made with Indian history in the backdrop in Shatranj ke Khiladi and another movie had a borrowed name from chess character Wazir, albeit having chess as the background and not the core content. Suprisingly, India’s best chess exponent Vishwanathan Anand’s life was too simple and straight forward to convert into a fairy tale. There have been few movies made on Boxing – none so melodramatic as Apne but then these were core Bollywood movies and not sports technicalities. Bollywood historically has lots of subplots and operated in the formula mode and sports was not a genre that they really wrote home about.
Badminton is another sport where Indian men and women are making merry currently and world is noticing that. Sania was a biopic made on Sania Nehwal and can tell you for sure, P.V. Sindhu another legend has biopic coming soon. Tennis has had some legendary doubles stories and it is not far that someone would bring in the story that Indians are interested in knowing – the rise and fall of India’s tennis doubles better known as the Indian Express and you can even squeeze in the story of tennis separated at Wagah border – Rohan Bopanna and Aisam Qureishi of Pakistan. India’s flying sikh Milkha Singh who ran the race of his life in the country where he had to run away from and his tale was very nicely brought to the tinsel screen.
All these Indian sports stories as I mentioned earlier were to borrow a cliché from India’s greatest movie Sholay, that every story has a emotion, drama, tragedy and sports movies are no different. Indians revel in formula-based movies and look forward to predictable outcomes.
Comparing with Hollywood, they have produced some great sports genre movies both in fiction and faction category. They have had classics like Escape to Victory, Invictus, Remember the Titans which were on nonfiction side to Million Dollar Arm, Jerry Mcguire, Rocky series which were more on the fiction. They even have had some classics in a sport like Chess where they haven’t really been the top such as Queen’s Gambit which was a series but a classic one and then you have basketball and American football and baseball movies that have solid stories which make you believe in the tale and one gets the feeling that these are real events. Obviously, Bollywood has a lot to learn from their Western counterparts in this genre for sure, but things have obviously started moving in the right direction.
Back to Chess, we have stories to tell of Praggnanandhaa who at 16 defeated the mighty Magnus Carlsen or Abhimanyu Mishra an Indian boy of Edison, NJ who at 12 has claimed youngest grandmaster record. Geet Sethi or Michael Ferreira or Yasin Merchant or Pankaj Advani are the names which can get a biopic too and the story of IPL may be converted into longest running web series and mind you, I am not counting Inside Edge which is an inspired by IPL. How about the debacle of ICL now defunct league which led to the IPL.
We do have innumerous tales to tell and the diaspora world over want to watch them even with desi tadka and get that adrenaline rush. Let’s bring those out on celluloid and realize that sports has always been a motivator and unitor of people especially as we are in an age when sports is an acceptable career option, let us motivate and inspire our next generation. That is our future and how better to navigate them in their journey while doing some chest thumping and basking in the past glories.
