CAST: Shreyas Talpade, Parambrata Chaterjee , Ankur Dabas, Ashish Vidyarthi 

DIRECTED BY Jayprad Desai

BLUF:The extraordinary journey of cricketer Pravin Tambe, a right-armed leg spinner, who made his biggest cricket league debut at the age of 41, not having played any international or even first class cricket before that. A modern-day fable of an underdog who fought against his destiny and triumphed over it.

THE MEAT AND THE POTATOES

Pravin Tambe, made his IPL debut for Rajasthan Royals at the age of 41 without playing first-class cricket at all. The film starts with Indian head coach Rahul Dravid’s remarks about Tambe as a player about  his passion on the cricket field.

The story is told in the voice of Pioneer’s scribe Rajat Sanyal, a sports journalist who  rated Tambe as a mere gully cricketer.

The film is the journey of Tambe who always had dreamt of playing the Ranji trophy for Mumbai as a kid. The cricketer started his club career by taking a chance to play as a substitute for the Orient Shipping Company team and later being a part of the company. During his time there, Tambe meets Ashish Vidyarthi’s Coach Paradkar who advises Tambe to bowl leg-spin as opposed to the medium pace he was bowling at that time and the cricketer does not want to risk his selection by changing his strategy

Losing that important game,  Tambe again finds himself playing gully cricket while holding onto different day jobs and training with Paradkar on his leg-spin. Things fall into place as his former clubmate Abey Kuruvilla helped him to get into DY Patil Sports Academy as a player and later as a  coach which paves the way for him to interview with Rahul Dravid to play for Rajasthan Royals.

IN THE KNOW

Kiran Yadnyopavit has delivered a fabulous  script with nauced writing delivers both laughs and concern about the lead. Jayprad Desai has done exceptionally well to keep the film as realistic and grounded as possible and not overly dramatizing the screenplay.

Ghorakshnath Khande’s editing is excellent.

Shreyas Talpade takes you into the life of Pravin Tambe in flesh and blood. He has imbued the passion for cricket that Dravid describes Pravin Tambe as a player is. Anjali Patil and Ashish Vidyarthi both have very limited roles but deliver to a T.

 Parambrata Chatterjee who is the scribe narrating the story is brilliant in his role.

Some of the writing is worth repeating:

Paradkar says to Tambe, “Pravin, life or match all you need is one good over”.

As Rajat Sanyal concludes, Pravin Tambe isn’t a hero because of his achievements on the field but because he never stopped living his passion despite all his failures.