It is said if Cricket is religion in India. Sachin is the God. How rightly it is said. But movies also have their own set of a cult following.
It is hard to find an Indian who is not interested in either of the two.
Yes, Bollywood and Cricket are India's two most boasted about obsessions. We are a nation where cricketers are deified and temples are made in the name of cine stars. Yet it may be surprising to know that seldom do two meet in a nation of over a billion people.
Let's toss aside for the moment the fact about rumours of cricketers dating film actresses, and we see that the connections between India's two obsessions become few and far between.
How many good movies have been made on Cricket in Bollywood? I can count on my fingers and I wouldn't be done with just a single hand.
Aamir Khan's Lagaan was perhaps the first movie in the recent history that had a cricket match forming the backbone of the story's plot. The movie showed the rise of the underdog when an ill-equipped team of Indian villagers managed to defeat the trained English team to get three-year lagaan (land tax) waived off. Even the Oscars couldn't ignore the film, but fell just short of honouring it with a golden-man statuette. Aamir Khan had earlier starred in a cricket centric film "Awwal Number" which was directed by the late Dev Anand.
Another movie that had its story woven around cricket was Nagesh Kukunoor's Iqbal , which told the story of a deaf and mute young boy's passion for cricket. With sheer struggle and hard work, Iqbal (played by Shreyas Talpade ) rises from a small village to being a pace bowler in cricket team.
And now, when the Cricket mania is at its high, ready to hit the theatres is Milan Luthria's Hat Trick which tells the story of five different characters whose lives are linked to cricket in one way or another. The movie has Kunal Kapoor and Rimi Sen playing fans of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Paresh Rawal plays a cricket buff in England, while Nana Patekar plays a doctor who hates everything about the game. The movie's story moves against the backdrop of Cricket World Cup.
Mandira Bedi, a cricket commentator had also acted in a movie titled "Meerabai Not out", which is a story of a middle aged school teacher who's obsessed with cricket.
Recently famed South Indian film-maker Prakash Raj made a film titled "Dhoni" where a young school boy is shown to be an aspiring cricketer, but his father insists on him concentrating in his studies.
In the film "Dil Bole Hadippa" Rani Mukherjee became the first female actress to play Cricket onscreen.
Akshay Kumar's film Patiala House may have bombed as the box office, but nevertheless Akshay wasnt deterred from showing his bowling talent onscreen. In this film Akshay plays the role of a NRI cricket player, who desires to be a part of the England cricket team, but sacrifices his dreams for his father's patriotism.
Apart from these, hardly any other movie comes to mind while talking about Cricket. Yes, we can see glimpses of the game in films like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (that had a cricket sequence) or Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (in which Salman expressed his love on a cricket field, in the middle of a match). But these apart, India's two favourite obsessions have hardly been portrayed properly on the silver screen .
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