Stumped at the box office

Chak De India was considered to be a surprise hit. In spite of coming from the Yash Raj banner, and featuring Hindi film industry’s biggest star, no one expected the hockey-based film to set the box office on fire before its release. In a nation where interest revolves around one sport - cricket - a film on hockey, that too about a women’s team, was not exactly a fancy bet.

But Shimit Amin’s finely-crafted Chak De… won the heart of audiences and got critical acclaim too, and is now counted among the best sport-based films made in India.

A film revolving around cricket, you would think, ought to do better. But the marriage of India’s two most popular pastimes — cricket and films — has rarely worked. Le Chakka (Bengali) and Chennai 600028 (Tamil) are some of the regional films that had cricket settings and did well commercially, but the Hindi film industry has found it hard to replicate this success. Nagesh Kukunoor’s Iqbal, which came close, is a rarity. Lagaan falls in a sort of grey area, as it had cricket for a major part of the drama but can hardly be slotted as a ‘sports’ film.

“Even Iqbal was more an underdog story than a cricket film,” points out Subhash Kapoor, who made last year’s Phas Gaye Re Obama. “But yes, it at least touched on certain cricket-related issues like selection and administration. But a truly good cricket film is yet to be made in Bollywood,” says Kapoor, who himself experimented with a story around cricket in his debut film, Say Salaam India. It was one of at least three films that were made to coincide with the last World Cup, held in 2007, but chances are you wouldn’t even recollect the names of any of them.

“I got finance to make Say Salaam India on the condition that I would finish and release the film in time for the World Cup. The other films were Hattrick and Meerabai Not Out but for some reason the latter’s release got postponed,” says Kapoor, adding that even though the idea was to cash in on the cricket fever at the time, the audience wasn’t receptive to any of these films. Earlier, in 2003, a film called Stumped was released around the World Cup but vanished before you could say ‘out’.

How do you explain the fact that an industry which produces around 150 films a year has failed to produce even one good cricket film? The problem, says Kapoor, is that most filmmakers feel that if they have cricket as a setting, they’ve won half the battle. As a result, the script and the story haven’t been up to scratch. Years ago, Dev Anand directed Awwal Number, starring then upcoming teen heartthrob Aamir Khan, and cast himself in the role of a selector. But the film failed due to the lack of a good story.

Last week, Patiala House, starring Akshay Kumar in the role of a pace bowler who represents England and wins them a championship, hit screens. The film opened poorly, in spite of having an A-grade star and the release being timed just a week before the ongoing World Cup. It could be to do with the fact that the makers never promoted it as a cricket film, selling it as an emotional drama instead. Though audiences knew about the presence of cricketers Andrew Symonds, Herschelle Gibbs and Kieron Pollard in the film, the excitement was missing.

“My film was not about cricket,” defends director Nikhil Advani. “It did have Akshay playing a fast bowler and the climax centred on a cricket match, but it was essentially an emotional drama between a father and a son with cricket as just a backdrop.” With the film having received a lukewarm response at the box office, we can safely say that we are still far from getting a truly heart-stopping cricket film.

Four years since his last attempt, would Kapoor make a cricket film any differently now? “Of course,” he says. “To begin with, the dynamics of the sport have changed drastically in the last few years. If a cricket film has to be made today, it’ll have to reflect the heightened commercialisation of the game. Also, the length of a T20 match is only an hour more than the average running time of a film. The film, then, will have to be infinitely more thrilling than a T20 match,” he says. Going by the industry’s past record, this is perhaps too much to ask for.