Switching

Shah Rukh Khan took the surprise decision to play a hockey coach in Chak De! India — a combination of national pride, patriotism and hockey. The formula worked well, and Shah Rukh bagged several best actor trophies

The glamour of Bollywood actors, and the adulation received by sportspersons have often attracted stars in these fields to exchange roles, albeit not too successfully, writes V. Gangadhar

Good looks, wealth, public adulation, almost to the point of hero worshipping blindly. Two categories of Indians were blessed with these qualities — our sportspersons (particularly cricketers) and our filmstars. Constantly featured in the celebrity list of Page 3, they often indulged in mutual back scratching, yet made no attempt to hide the desire to exchange their roles, filmstars wanting to play cricket and cricketers being featured in films.

The Indian scenario offered full scope for such role switches. Even in the 1950s, when contributions were needed for the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund, one way to raise funds was to organise cricket matches involving filmstars.

I had watched one of these matches where stars like Nargis, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and others made up the two teams, donned pads and gloves and played a ‘filmy’ version of cricket. The packed stadium with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru present erupted into cheers and a lot of money was collected.

Some of the actors were genuinely interested in sports. Dilip Kumar was keen on cricket and later badminton, while Pran owned a first division league football team, Bombay Dynamos. Since then, such starry cricket matches have been regularly organised for various causes.

The filmstars’ love for cricket manifested in other ways as well. If an actor could never make it to the real Team India, he could portray a role in a movie where he could do it. Dev Anand did it in Filmstan’s Love Marriage when he wooed Mala Sinha, while playing cricket. For once, Dev Anand had to wear whites and discard his usual fancy dress outfits though the mannerisms remained even when he took guard. Years later, Dev Anand returned to the theme of cricket, this time in a thriller, produced by his own production house, Awwal Number, where as a policeman, during the climax he thwarted a bomb explosion in a packed stadium when hero Aamir Khan was approaching towards a century.

Many films based on cricket appeared off and on. One such movie was Chamatkar in which Naseeruddin Shah played a ghost and helped cricket coach Shah Rukh Khan to score a win for his college team against its traditional rivals.

Malamaal had a couple of scenes, which featured Kapil Dev playing cricket. The ‘mother’ of all cricket films, was, of course Lagaan with its background of Indian freedom struggle where the mighty British were beaten in their own game by a bunch of village bumpkins, led by Aamir Khan. So good was the film and its cricket match scenes, that eruption of noise inside the theatre, resembled that of a packed stadium.

Our female stars, too, were not able to resist the call of the willow. Rani Mukerjee wielded the bat in style in Dil Bole Hadippa.

"More is merrier," believed one of our producers, who made a film Stumped, where he brought together a galaxy of cricketers like Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Rahul Dravid, Zaheer Khan and Ravi Shastri. Why such a film was made stumped everyone and wisely they kept away from it!
If filmstars were attracted to cricket, it was the same with our players. Bollywood meant more to some of them than even Lord’s. The lure of the arclights was irresistible. Sunil Gavaskar was less than his usual immaculate self in the Marathi film Mayechi Saveli (1994) and wisely moved over to the commentary box.

Tall and debonair Sandeep Patil and the not-so-handsome Syed Kirmani were the hero and villain, respectively, of Kabhi Ajnabi The (1985), which sank without a trace at the boxoffice.

A brilliant fielder, Ajay Jadeja (left) appeared stiff and uneasy on the silver screen, which was evident in his films like Khel and Pal Pal Dil Ke Saath

Mumbai’s people always came in huge numbers to watch their own Vinod Kambli bat, but kept well away from the theatres when his crime thriller, Annarth, was showing. Kambli later switched to television and had to make do with appearances in some comedy programmes and reality shows like Sach Ka Saamna.

Somehow, the magic, which cricketers displayed on the pitch, was not evident in their reel-life roles. Ajay Jadeja, who had a pleasinsg personality made his debut in a crime thriller, Khel, followed by Pal Pal Dil Ke Saath. A brilliant fielder, who moved effortlessly on the field, Jadeja appeared stiff and uneasy on the silver screen and wisely moved on to the role of a cricket expert for the NDTV 24x7 channel.

Slightly longer and more impressive was the career of former pace bowler, Salil Ankola, who had been treated shabbily by the cricket selectors. Tall and good looking, he was the hero of Kurukshetra, dealing with political corruption and followed it up with Pitah and Chura Liya Hai Tumne. These films proved to be non-starters but Salil had better luck on the small screen where he got lot of admiration in the TV serial, Kora Kagaaz, produced by Asha Parekh.

Rani Mukerjee wielded the bat in Dil Bole Hadippa!

Even Pakistani cricketers were not immune to the lure of Bollywood. Pakistan opener Mohsin Khan, who scored a double century at Lord’s, went out for a duck in Bollywood, despite marrying film star, Reena Roy.

Cricket was not the only game that captured the imagination of our actors and filmmakers alike. Shah Rukh Khan took the surprise decision to play a hockey coach in Chak De! India — a combination of national pride, patriotism and hockey. The formula worked well and Shah Rukh Khan bagged several best actor trophies for the highly successful film.

After cricket and hockey, even lawn tennis had a brush with glamour when Anand Amritraj of the omnipresent Amritraj brothers wangled a role in a James Bond film Octopussy starring Roger Moore as 007, only because he was one of the producers and the film was shot extensively in India.

Now with many other sports coming into their own, Indian boxing’s glamour boy Vijender Singh has been offered a role in a movie Patiala Express. 

Other Indian boxers like Dinesh Kumar, Jai Bhagwan and Amandeep Singh would also be seen in this movie.

More recently our tennis champion Leander Paes, too, has been roped in to play a role in a Hindi film.