83 – hindi movie curtain raiser

For the first ever time a trailer gets review post!!! There is an upcoming movie scheduled for Christmas eve release, on 1983 world up win. It has been in making for a while with much hype around who will be playing Kapil’s devils. Now that the trailer is out, it is no wonder that the expectation around the movie has hit the ceiling. It is possibly one of the best made trailers, with the actual events contributing to its content naturally. I belong to that tribe of movie watchers who get goosebumps on just seeing India flag being waved in slow motion, with or without thumping BGM. More so if it is accompanied by a sporting event where India is shown victorious. All the more top of the world stuff if it happens to be on cricket. This one trailer has all these 3 elements along with situations that happened in real. If at all it is even slightly and remotely engaging of a screenplay, this movie would be the biggest blockbuster to come out of India. 

All things apart – Kapil Dev. Probably the first major sports icon, especially for those who follow cricket, whom my generation of kids looked up to. The first major world beater with maximum number of test wickets. Gavaskar reached the 10k mark, but I never had a chance to see him play in real time. Even otherwise, somehow it was always Kapil, his way of holding the ball as if hiding it in his armpit at the time of delivery, his “Nataraja” style pose while playing cross batted swipe on leg side, the expectation on him to score as a batsman, as a bowler and catch everything that comes his way as a fielder, it must’ve been a hell of lot of effort, to come through successfully and establish the brand of cricket in stone for his successors to follow and leverage. He is from a generation that “saw” cricket on radio commentary and on newspaper articles. He is probably the first of the Mohicans, after whom the cult of cricketer worship formed. The first of the assembly line of “Boost” ad heroes. Guess for a long time, the boost dabba carried his famed bowling action pose on its cover. He is one who truly overcame adverse situations, be it the political landscape of cricket, having come from lesser known region for producing cricketers then, fighting his way up across mumbaikars and other state domination, toiling on unforgiving Indian surfaces that were tailor made (literally) for spinners, in adverse climate never meant for fast bowlers operating on their prime, a batting line up that turned up less time with a decent score to bowl to than more, if at all there were a scenario where odds were stacked against, he needed additional space to cover them. 

I truly hope the movie is serves as a long over due to the claim to fame that he deserves. Not that it needs a Bollywood movie for the world to know about his exploits already set in stone. But for people of this generation who are accustomed to cricketers having a fame time shorter than a firefly’s life span, here is one legend who outshone other titans and paved the way for an entire sport to become the multi billion dollar behemoth it is at present now. BCCI and Indian cricket owe a lot more to Kapil for his contributions and hope the movie makers took that into note while making the same. For someone who never had cable to watch cricket matches happening outside of India, depending on ESPN rates and friend’s father’s grace in continuing the subscription and permission to watch those matches at their homes, the exploits of Kapil were all theory and read from newspaper excerpts and on Sportstar ( a popular cricket magazine during my school days. Don’t recollect if it covered any other sports though). Having seen some of his matches on YouTube, especially the world cup matches of ’83, Turnbridge wells heroics, his myth is something that I’ve grown with from what I’ve read. Along with Sachin, Dhoni and Kumble, Kapil will probably be the first amongst the equals of my list of favorite cricketers. Truly and eagerly waiting to see it on silver screen in 3 weeks’ time.