Thanks to Covid-induced delays in filming and theatre closures, the Hindi film industry seems to have developed a glut of sports-themed films of late. Ranveer Singh’s middling 83 just came out in December, Shahid Kapoor’s Jersey remake hits cinemas in two weeks, while Ajay Devgn’s football biopic Maidaan is slated for release in June. And then there’s Kaun Pravin Tambe. Devoid of the hype, press screenings and celebrity cast that other similar mainstream films boast, Kaun Pravin Tambe was released on Friday on Disney+ Hotstar barely 30 minutes after the Lucknow Super Giants defeated the Chennai Super Kings in an Indian Premier League thriller.
The lack of marketing and promotion is a shame, as this Shreyas Talpade starrer on the IPL’s oldest ever debutant is a delight. Despite its issues, it never really devolves into cliched hagiographies that have plagued so many other biopics of its kind.
A callback to Iqbal
Directed by Jayprasad Desai and written by Kiran Yadnyopavit, Kaun Pravin Tambe marks Talpade’s first cricket film since his breakthrough performance in Nagesh Kukunoor’s Iqbal (2005). The masterpiece tugged at your heartstrings, by focusing on the trials and tribulations of a hearing and speech impaired young farmer who has a penchant for bowling pace and had the perfect soundtrack to match it.
Desai and Yadnyopavit, on the other hand, mostly try to amuse you from the get-go, portraying Talpade’s Tambe as a hustling Mumbaikar in 2011 who juggles his construction supervisor day job alongside his club cricket, with the occasional parent-teacher meeting thrown-in. Although they never quite reach the heights of Kukonoor in the film, they have a knack for balancing levity with a decent understanding of Mumbai cricket culture — something the likes of Netflix and Arvind Adiga utterly failed to do with Selection Day (2018).
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Biggest selling point of Kaun Pravin Tambe
Aided by a quick-witted Talpade, Desai and Yadnyopavi also successfully give you a sense of the numerous odd jobs Pravin Tambe took on since the 1990s to chase his “crazy” Ranji selection dream and the toll it took on his relationship with his wife, played by an equally funny and compelling Anjali Patil. As a result, there’s a lot to like in Kaun Pravin Tambe — from the chemistry between Talpade and Patil to the film’s movement along the timeline of Tambe’s life and career.
The biggest selling point of the film by far is that we see a significant amount of onfield play as well as time spent training in the nets and the pivotal role of Tambe’s coach, played by an evergreen Ashish Vidyarthi. This is necessary to establish just how Tambe evolved from a bog-standard but prolific club-level medium pacer to the wily wrist-spinner who caught the eye of white-ball franchise sides based out of Jaipur, Abu Dhabi and Port of Spain.
However, the biopic on a veteran leg spinner also makes several rookie mistakes and doesn’t completely stick the landing. Despite Parambrata Chatterjee’s best efforts, his role as the narrator and elitist sceptical sports journalist Rajat Sanyal is more perfunctory than interesting.
More often than not, he simply provides a basic biography lesson about Tambe to unfamiliar viewers and does not have a compelling enough character arc of his own, barring a mildly amusing callback in the film’s final scene.
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Cardinal sins
As such, Kaun Pravin Tambe commits the cardinal sin of inserting a generic composite character instead of letting the real-life anecdotes and obstacles speak for themselves as much as possible. Fortunately, the film’s light tone helps and Sanyal is ultimately more of a pantomime villain with limited but significant interactions with Tambe over a 15-year period.
It also would have been far better to actually show, rather than tell, Tambe’s IPL debut for Rajasthan Royals in 2013 and his journey within the Royals set up under Rahul Dravid, instead of simply skipping to the 2014 night, on which he recorded a hat-trick against the Kolkata Knight Riders.
The emotional impact of Tambe’s eventual Ranji debut, which was repeatedly shown as his overarching goal throughout the film, is also cheapened by being tacked on in what is a rushed climax.
But on paper, as well as presentation for the majority of its 134-minute runtime, Kaun Pravin Tambe represents exactly the kind of sports films that we need more of in this industry — hyperlocal and light-hearted, as opposed to nationalistic and melodramatic. If there’s ever a third such cricketing instalment, we might have a Talpade Cinematic Universe on our hands, and I’d be first in line to see it.
(Edited by Srinjoy Dey)