When it came to sports too, Dev Anand was Awwal Number. His film with this title — which incidentally also starred Aamir Khan — bombed at the box-office, but is yet evidence of the late star’s adventurous palate where film-making is concerned, and his love for cricket.

“You are wasting away opportunity if you don’t write a story on sports that can be made into a film,’’ he would often chide me. “What can be richer in scope, drama and pathos than sports and sports personalities? It would make for compelling viewing.’’
When I interviewed him last for the channel NewsX a few months ago on the eve of the release of his swansong Chargesheet, Dev Anand seemed even more enthusiastic. India had won the cricket World Cup earlier in the year, and he was excited
“There is no better time to come up with a sports film. I would love to do one,’’ he said. I reminded him that he had burnt his fingers with Awwal Number a couple of decades earlier. “Failure doesn’t faze me,’’ he replied, “come up with a great story and we get cracking.’’ That deal, alas, must now await another life.
Fact, however, remains that Indian cinema has lagged behind terribly in exploiting sports as subject. Unlike in Hollywood, which is flush with such work from as long back as the 1930s, films with sport as even backdrop — leave aside central theme — have been so rare in India that they can be counted on the fingers of both hands.
Dev Anand made Awwal Number in 1990, though the pioneering effort can be traced to the melodramatic tear-jerker Boxer starring Mithun Chakravarthy (based on The Champ starring Jon Voight and Faye Dunaway) was released in 1984.
Indian cricketers, given their star status, have off and on featured in films, of course. Salim Durrani made his debut (along with Parveen Babi) in the 1973 film Charitra, Sandeep Patil and Syed Kirmani starred in Kabhi Ajnabee (1985) and Sunil Gavaskar made a guest appearance in Naseeruddin Shah’s film Malaamal in 1988.
But these films did not boast of sports as theme. All told though, there have been barely a dozen in this genre. Cricket, which besots the Indian psyche, has featured in most of these, a couple of them spun around match-fixing of which Jannat which was a modest success. One felt though that such a riveting story could have been tackled with more diligent research to make it more true to life
Aamir Khan’s memorable Lagaan came more than a decade after Awwal Number.
The film was allegorical, deploying various cricket clichés — especially in the extended climax which featured a match between the rulers and the ruled — to depict how the downtrodden can triumph against injustice and malafide authority.
Subhash Ghai’s Iqbal, directed by Nagesh Kukunoor, was a sensitively made film about the travails of a young hearing and speech impaired boy trying to make it to the highest level, with Naseeruddin Shah (as alcoholic coach) and Shreyas Talpade (as cricketer) putting in sterling performances.
Shah Rukh Khan’s Chak De India, which released in 2007, was path-breaking in the sense that it was based on hockey, a sport which has faced colossal neglect from authority and fans. It rocked the box-office to show that sports-based films — even if not on cricket — was not necessarily unacceptable in a country that did not have a sporting ethos, as long as it was well-made.
In the last few years, John Abraham has acted in film revolving around football, and Akshay Kumar recently produced a film with hockey as theme. Neither did well at the box-office, but that could be for reasons of quality rather than disenchantment with the sport.
For some reason, Indian cinema has been a laggard where biopics of sportspersons is concerned. Hollywood has toasted — and roasted — sportspersons for their achievements and foibles (Bodyline, Chariots of Fire, Raging Bull, Somebody Up There Likes Me, Ali etc), but Indian producers and directors have fought shy of travelling this terrain.
I believe Ranjitsinhji, Dhyan Chand, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, PT Usha, Mary Kom, Tendulkar-Kambli, Mohammed Azharuddin — to name a few — are great subjects who would engage and entertain cinema fans too if the film is well-made. Perhaps Rakesh Om Prakash Mehra, who is making a film on the early life of Milkha Singh (with Farhan Akhtar in the lead) will carve out a niche for others to follow.
Sitting up there somewhere in the Elysian fields, Dev Anand would approve.