Film: Azhar
Director: Anthony D’Souza
Actors: Emraan Hashmi, Prachi Desai
Rating: *1/2
The only time I’ve seen Mohamed Azharuddin (Azhar), once the captain of the Indian cricket team, up, close and personal, was recently on a show called Press Conference on ABP News, where a few journalists were invited to pose questions to both Azhar and Emraan Hashmi, the lead actor who plays the title role in this film.
I had finished with my quick question to Hashmi (being perhaps better versed with stuff around movies). The anchor was Dibang, possibly the most sober face on Indian news television. This was maybe meant to be a regular promotional interview for the film.
But Dibang actually had only question to ask Azhar, which he did repeatedly, framing it in various ways, with newer examples to support his case, but sticking to the same thing again and again: Did Azhar take the money, and throw away cricket matches as he’s been accused of? Another journo in the room asked Azhar to swear on the Quran if he hadn’t—rather unnecessarily if not distastefully bringing up religion.
All I could do was keenly observe Azhar sitting there in front of us—looking calm and disturbed at the same time—his fingers playing with his knee; eyes, like his cricketing wrist, glancing around, for a sympathetic eye-contact. There was much heat in the room throughout. The recording had to be stopped once because of the film’s publicist, who later raised even more hue and cry once the episode had been shot.
Having watched this movie now, and keeping the above context in mind, it appears rather clear that this is in fact the most expensive way for Azhar to exonerate himself among the public, even if the court has given him a “clean chit.” Anyone with even a vague understanding of law will know a “clean chit” from court doesn’t necessarily mean a person didn’t commit a certain crime. It means the evidences against him could not prove beyond doubt that he did. In this case, for instance, the sting-operation done by colleague Manoj Prabhakar is not admissible in court.
The given case of course relates to the late ‘90s, when Azhar was accused by the South African captain Hansie Cronje (a co-accused himself) of participating in ‘match fixing’ in cricket—basically being paid to perform, bearing in mind an outcome that would suit the betting odds. The fact is, and it’s clear from the film as well, that nobody stood up for Azhar, apart from Kapil Dev much later, although Kapil’s own role in the said scandal is strongly suspect.
So you already know this film version isn’t journalistic. The filmmakers make that clear right in the beginning. So could such a movie be fun to watch? It’s fiction, and hell yeah, it can be.
Think about the vast subsection of cricket fans in India who’re also hardcore movie buffs. The scale of a film like this, and with Azhar participating in the scripting and the research himself, could give them a rare, realistic inside story of the dressing room, the boys who enjoy fame and female attention, playing both on and off the field. The politics of the sport itself. And what it does to young ones rather suddenly exposed to a glitzy world totally unknown, if not wholly unimaginable.
That, I thought, would be Azhar, even if one were to cop out on the match fixing business. Besides, there is a legit story of a kid from a lower middle-class home in Hyderabad rising to the top of the gentleman’s game at a time when it wasn’t as common as it is now. Three successive Test centuries, debut onwards, is not a joke still.
There is all of that in this film, if you were to simply check boxes on a list. You need talent of a special kind still to make a complete halwa out of all of it. This movie appears instead as some sort of a long explanation to the world, delivered by the corny looking Emraan Hashmi, on behalf of Azhar, setting the record straight—if not on the match fixing scandal, then on his extra-marital affair with a Bollywood actor of the time, Sangeeta Bijlani (Nargis Fakhri), and his first wife (Prachi Desai) adding to the over-the-top sob opera. Now really who cares? Okay, I hope for the filmmakers, plenty do.
Some might laugh at the fancy dress competition before them, with cricketers Siddhu, Jadeja, Shastri, Dev, Prabhakar (called Navjyot, Ajay, Ravi, Kapil, Manoj in the film), prancing around in pajamas. At least the last one seems to have been defamed. It’d be funnier if anyone of them went to court though, taking this stuff seriously. No, you just can’t. And that’s the problem. Most Indians take cricket far more seriously than this.
-Mayank Shekhar
ABP Live