Sports in Bollywood....

A few months back before the release of ‘ Chak De’ if I had written this article then I would have probably given the title ‘Sports & Bollywood’ instead of ‘Sports in Bollywood’. That article would have compared sports & bollywood in terms of their popularity. I would have also not reached any consensus at the end of the article.

But what I am writing today deals with the growing inclusion of sports theme in Bollywood movies. I mean it did exist earlier also like in case of Lagaan [But not a main stream sports movie],Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar[my favorite sports bollywood movie] and a few forgettable ones but they were the rarest breed of Indian Cinema.

Now I believe that this breed is going to become an integral part of Indian Cinema. The reasons for this is very simple. Firstly we seem to enjoy such themes as observed in case of the superhit SRK starrer ‘Chak de’ and the very promising trailors of movie ‘Goal’ starring John Abraham, Bipasha Basu and Arshad Warsi.We are inquisitive about other sports apart from ‘Cricket’ as both the movies do not deal with Cricket.

Secondly such movies inevitably give us the sense of ‘victory of the human spirit’ with which the masses associate in a besotted manner.

Thirdly such movies have a huge scope of being a multi starrer which adds great value to to the audience’s movie watching feast.

Finally and most importantly such movies seems to be doing great deal of good to sports in itself. Indian Cricket team won the T 20 world Cup, Indian Hockey Team won the Asia Cup,Vishwanathan Anand is the reigning king of the chess world and yet a lot more positive developments have taken place in Indian Sports. Shahrukh Khan has been able to contribute a lot more to this recent upstream phenomenon of Indian sports more than any one else in the country.

This lateral shift of sports into Indian cinema is a healthy sign for both bollywood and Indian sports which would ensure entertainment meets laurels.

-Saikat Saha