Let me get a bit of blasphemy out of the way first.... I think the person who deserved the Best Actor Award in 2005 (presented by every film glossy) was Naseeruddin Shah in Iqbal.

Oh, all right. I said this because I wanted to say something that would grab everyone by the short and curly and exclaim, oh now that looks like something for which I should definitely stop watching my Britney Spears-Kevin Federline sex video for the 34th time.
That apart, I really do think that Naseeruddin Shah deserved that Best Actor award. And that Iqbal is an exceptional piece of film-making. And just so that we are all on the same page – Iqbal is a film about cricket.

Sports in Hindi cinema? Let’s face it. We aren’t a sporting nation. So, I guess that in a country that has won a total of eight Olympic gold medals in the history of modern Olympics and six of them by 1956, it is but natural that sports is not a popular subject in our films. So, even though by the time P. C. Barua made Devdas in 1935, we were already churning out about 200 Hindi films a year, the first Hindi movies to have a ‘sporting’ theme happened 50 years later in 1984. All Rounder was based on cricket and was one more desperate shy by Kumar Gaurav to try and restart his flagging career. It didn’t. And Hip Hip Hurray, based on football, also did nothing for Raj Kiran’s career. (Which wasn’t going anywhere in the first place.)

On the other hand, considering that if you take cricket and movies out of an Indian, you’ve taken out most of his heart and soul, you’d think that cricket would be an extremely popular theme in Hindi films.
Well, in a manner of speaking it has been...

The cricketing greens have always been ripe breeding ground for actress-cricketer romances of which the most famous was Sharmila Tagore and the Nawab of Pataudi. Equally famous, even though it didn’t endure, was Anju Mahendru’s engagement to the then-not-yet Sir Gary Sobers. Ravi Shastri almost married Amrita Singh and Mohammed Azharuddin did most definitely marry Sangeeta Bijlani, to the din of much hoo-ha and controversy since he was already married. Some cricketing alliances even crossed borders – Reena Roy married Moshin Khan and while Neena Gupta and Vivian Richards didn’t marry, their union was cemented in a more permanent manner – with a daughter.

But the onscreen love affair of cricket and Hindi films remained a non starter. And not for lack of trying. Cricketers tried to become film stars – Syed Kirmani, Sandeep Patil, Vinod Kambli and Ajay Jadeja. And film stars tried to become cricketers – on screen, that is. All Rounder, Awwal Number, Stumped, Hattrick to name a few.
Who knows why movies on cricket flopped....
Barring Lagaan.

Naturally, the more cinema-erudite amongst us will suck in their outraged breaths, cluck their affronted tongues and remind us that Lagaan was not about cricket at all but about our Azadi ki Ladayi and that cricket was only a metaphor for the Yoke of the Ghastly Goras. Which is interesting because 60 years after we won that Ladayi, the very same Yoke is one of the biggest money spinners for independent India! The last World Cup – yup, the very same in which we emerged a glorious 13th among 16 teams – generated advertising expenditure estimated to be between 1500 and 2000 crores. Rupees, I must add because the BCCI’s revenue has crossed a breath-whooshing-out-of-my-body one billion. Not rupees, but dollars.

And, also barring Iqbal. Which is most definitely about cricket and not only performed decently in the box office but is also a shining example of how you can make a great film about anything. Even cricket...
Today, of course, things are totally different because we speak in ACDI.
Anno Chak De! India.

I saw this film in a matinee show in Mysore and to tell you the truth, I wasn’t expecting much. I can barely recognise a hockey stick, I’ve never been a fan of Shah Rukh Khan (Blasphemy Number 2?) and deprived of my siesta, I was sleepy, irritable and ready to write off the film. But even if I was in the habit of writing letters in blood to Shah Rukh Khan, even if I loved hockey, this film would have exceeded my fondest expectations.

Firstly, after a long, long time, here was a movie where the star is the art of making good cinema, usually assigned to doing jhaadu-katka in the extras’ make-up room in most of our films. Everything else served that end – the taut, crisp script and screenplay, the superb performances, even the slick, edge-of-your-seat hockey footage which was on par with any Hollywood film.

Secondly, this film has…I was going to say ‘balls’ but that might not be quite the word to use for a film about women’s hockey. So, I’ll make that ‘guts’. Because it has broken so many rules, many of them sacred cows both for ‘mainstream Hindi cinema’ (whatever that is) and Yashraj Films, it’s almost blasphemy. (Blasphemy No. 3?) Starting with the fact that it is about hockey and that too women’s hockey. Then it has 16 young girls whose collective good looks would fit on Aishwarya Rai’s pinkie nail – with room left over. If that isn’t bad enough, they spend the entire film wearing no make-up, with sweaty skin (some even pimpled) and in shapeless track suits. Then there is no ishq-wishq, no naach-gaana, no glittering sets (though the Australian locations were fabulous), no swirly-whirly clouds of chiffon-clad prettiness, not even a tulip anywhere in sight. In fact, the ‘glamour’ content of the entire film would barely wet the bottom of a tailor’s thimble in Manish Malhotra’s workshop. To top it all, the film dares to trot out two dead horses that have been flogged so often and so hard in our films that they are ready to stand up and revolt – desh bhakti and women’s empowerment.

Boy, did they pull it off.
After a while, I – and the rest of the theatre – forgot that we were watching a film. Balbir, SoiMoi, Komal, Vidya, Preeti, even that awful Bindiya were all our girls. Their fight was our fight and we wanted so desperately for them to win. When the Hockey Federation head, Tripathi sneered, “Chakla-belan chalane wali Bharatiya naari knicker pehen ke hockey khelengi?!” we wanted to lynch the creep. When Coach Khan arm locked one of the eve-teasers in the now-famous Macdonald’s scene and snarled (to this effect), “Fight like a man. Our team has no place for wimps…” we clapped ourselves sore and thought, we couldn‘t have put it better, Coach. And in the World Cup finals match, seconds before Preeti was about to attempt a goal, when Komal yelled out to her, “Dikha de laundey ko,” the theatre erupted. And frankly speaking, I really can’t think of a better slogan for women’s empowerment.
Which leaves closing remarks.
Will Chak De! India do for hockey what Lagaan and Iqbal didn’t need to do for cricket – i.e. that ‘match-fixing’ will refer to hockey, not cricket?

Who knows. But it will be nice to have some fresh faces peddle me my tel-sabun, chai-champi and plasma TV because if I see one more ad with Sachin Tendulkar or Rahul Dravid, I’ll keel over and drown in my own vomit.
More importantly, does this mean that sports is the new “formula” for success in Hindi films? The makers of a slew of sport- based films that are soon to be released are certainly hoping it is. Goal with John Abraham, Arshad Warsi is about football. Subhash Ghai’s Cycle Kick should be about cycling but is also about football. Meerabai Not Out has Mandira Bedi as an Anil Kumble fan, who incidentally makes a special appearance in it. And David Dhawan is making Hook Ya Crook. The whisper is that it may be about cricket.
I know. You noticed. That I didn’t say anything about Shah Rukh Khan in the film.
Do I need to when we’re almost drowning in the flood of ecstatic drool?
Oh, what the heck with it....I’ll say it anyway.
He was good. And it was a relief to spend an entire film in the shade, out of the blinding-hot charm of those hey-I-know-I’m-the-k-k-k-k-cutest-K-K-King-Khan dimples.
Secondly, I know Coach Khan will sweep the awards this year but, as far as I am concerned – and here comes Blasphemy No. 4 – what Naseer deserved for Iqbal, those 16 girls deserve for Chak De! India....
Oh, one more thing. Moral of the story – you can make a hit film about the mating habits of dung beetles as long as you have a great script.
After all, Happy Feet was about penguins.