Sports have instant connect with the Bollywood since the very beginning. Apart from sports or sports element forming the integral part of storyline of Bollywood’s script, Hindi film Industry has been abuzz with rumor of love affairs between Bollywood star and Sports persons. The ongoing Indian Premier League ( IPL) has also Bollywood connections with Hindi film stars such as Preity Zinta, Shilpa Shetty and Shahrukh Khan associated with Kings XI Punjab, Rajasthan Royals, Kolkata Knightriders respectively.
There have been various sports films made in the Hindi Film Industry. The best known Hindi films based on sports are Lagaan and Chak de India. Lagaan which was directed by Ashutosh Gawaskar had cricket as its central theme. The Oscar nominated film shows that how a simple villager Bhuvan portrayed brilliantly by Aamir Khan uses cricket to get tax exemption for an entire village. The film was based in the period when India was still not independent and was under the British Rule. The film got rave reviews from critics and was a box office success.
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Another film which caught the attention of audiences was Chak De India. The film directed by Shimit Amin is based on Hockey, India’s national sport and is the story of a Hockey Coach played by SRK who returns to coach a girl’s hockey team to make it the world champions and win his reputation back. The movie was released in 2007 and became an instant hit. The slogan” Chak de India ” became very popular all over the country. The film was loosely based on true story of Mir Ranjan Negi, the former coach of Indian women hockey team who strives hard to make his girls bring laurels to the country.
Another interesting film based on cricket which was applauded by critics was Nagesh Kukunoor directed “Iqbal”. The film revolved around the story of a boy who is deaf and has speech disorder’s struggle to register his place in the national cricket team.
Another sports films that comes to mind is Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikandar made by Aamir Khan Productions. The film which was released in the year 1992 was based on high school drama revolving around a prestigious cycle race competition.
Though most of the Hindi films are based on cricket, there have other Hindi films which have used boxing, racing , wrestling etc. as its theme. The one prominent film which revolves around boxing is Sunny Deol’ s starrer Apne. It starred all the three Deols- Dharmendra, Bobby and Sunny. In the movie Bobby fights to remove the blot on his father’s boxing career.
John Abraham starrer Goal was based on football whereas Saif Ali Khan, played a racing star in Ta Ra Pum Pum.
One of the earliest films made on cricket was Awwal Number. Devanand was the Chairman of Selectors who drops his brother from team because of his habit of boozing and being spendthrift. He was replaced by Sunny(Aamir Khan) which hurt him so much that he tried to bomb the stadium. Lahore is a recently released sports movie on boxing.
Sports films are more than welcome in this sports crazy nation but these should be dealt very carefully to catch the fancy of audiences.
