Former India cricketer and captain Kapil Dev revealed Saturday that initially he was hesitant about saying ‘Yes’ when the filmmakers of 83 approached him for his persmission. Incidentally 83 is movie base on the 1983 World Cup winning squad captained by Kapil. “My first thought was to say ‘No’ when they came to me to seek permission,” Dev said during an interaction in Chennai along with former India opening batsman Krishnamachari Srikanth who top-scored in the game with a swashbuckling innings of 38.
During the interaction the entire cast of 83 including Ranveer Singh was present along with director Kabir Khan. Ranveer Singh will portray Dev and the film will hit the theatres April 10, 2020.
“My first reaction was like no, we (players) didn’t want that to happen as we felt we were still young. The story should be about what happened 50-100 years back but at the end, every one of us, including me, said, ‘yes okay, fine’, if they want to make a movie on us, let them go ahead,” Dev said during the interaction.
“As a cricketer, I just want to say thank you very much to Kabir and his team. We never thought that they would go to such lengths to research what went behind the scenes during the 1983 World Cup. I have no words to explain my happiness,” added the best all-rounder India have ever produced.
It remains to be seen how Kabir Khan manages to recreate the India-Zimbabwe game during the 1983 World Cup. India were 17 for five at one stage and were just a step away from being knocked out of the tournament. Then Kapil played that still talked about innings of 175 and the rest as they say is history. Sadly, BBC who had the rights of telecasting the World Cup at that time was on strike. So Kapil’s innings was not recorded for posterity.
The film 83 also features R Badree, Harrdy Sandhu, Chirag Patil, Saqib Saleem, Pankaj Tripathi, Tahir Bhasin, Ammy Virk, and Saahil Khattar as the Men in Blue.
The Indian team had defeated West Indies in the finals to lift the World Cup trophy for the first time. However, it should be mentioned here that the win was not a flash in the pan. In the tournament opener also, the Indians had beaten the Windies led by Clive Lloyd.
PNN & Agencies