Cut to Flashback | Why Is Shreyas Talpade's 'Kaun Pravin Tambe?' Still Unknown?

Cricket is such a tangible part of our cultural fabric that it’s natural to expect a seamless marriage with storytelling. Yet, it’s been slim pickings with cricket movies. One of the reasons is most directors dramatise an already dramatic medium; they don’t trust the inherent suspense of life within the game.

Another reason is that we, as a people, are too close to the sport to treat it as a genre; it’s a bit like surgeons struggling to operate on their family members. As a result, when movie lovers think of this oeuvre, a handful of usual suspects still come to mind: MS Dhoni: The Untold Story, Jersey, Kai Po Che!, Lagaan, ’83, Ferrari Ki Sawaari, Inside Edge, even the cricket scenes of Awwal Number and Chamatkar.

But two of the most complete Indian cricket films are comparatively modest. Both feature the same actor playing a bowler, a rarity in a batting-haunted country. Nagesh Kukunoor’s Iqbal (2005) marked the breakout of Shreyas Talpade, as a fictional deaf bowler navigating a system rigged against small-town and minority aspirants. The film humanised all the tropes of a quintessential sports movie: marginalised underdog, rickety mentor, strict father, spirited sibling, superstar cameo (Kapil Dev). Seventeen years later, Talpade starred in Jayprad Desai’s Kaun Pravin Tambe?, a pandemic release that tells the once-in-a-generation tale of Pravin Tambe, a Mumbai striver who became the oldest ever IPL debutant at 41.

A still from 'Kaun Pravin Tambe'

Once Rajasthan Royals mentor Rahul Dravid plucked Tambe out of the wilderness in 2013, the stocky Maharashtrian leg spinner became an instant household name. His story remains right up there with the most astonishing sports stories of this century — along with Leicester City’s 2015-16 Premier League victory. For once, fertile source material translated into a solid film. But Desai’s biopic went relatively unheralded. Even today, when I mention it to anyone, the reaction adds an extra question mark to the one in the title: “What is ‘Kaun Pravin Tambe?’?” I remember watching it in the summer of 2022, and reflecting on the lyrical irony of its fate. The muted reception somehow mirrored the tireless theme of the film; it’s set up to age well and be recognised in the long run.

Perhaps Kaun Pravin Tambe? was too honest, unpretentious and dogged in a youth-driven terrain — much like the real-life Pravin Tambe and the actor playing him — to be appreciated in the moment. The reel-real symmetry is hard to ignore. In many ways, Talpade was born to play the role of a grafter. Despite the early acclaim, he remained on the fringes of commercial Hindi cinema since Iqbal. Much of the role looks personal, especially when Tambe keeps getting passed over by selectors looking for “fresher” talent. There’s a lot of truth — an accumulated, lived-in resilience — in how Talpade responds as Tambe, a man balancing the linearity of time with the non-linearity of hope.

The film features everything we don’t associate with the genre. It’s about a journeyman who keeps missing the bus. It’s about a part-time athlete and full-time adult who doesn’t have the luxury to keep dreaming in the far-flung suburbs of Mulund. It’s a grassroots setting: the Mumbai “maidan” ecosystem, gully and club-level tournaments, sports quotas, working-class obstacles. It’s about a man who works anywhere — shipping firm, diamond company, sports academy — that has a cricket division; he even waits tables at a dance bar so that his days are free for bowling practice. It’s about a cricketer who battles to preserve his identity as a husband, father, brother and son. It’s also about someone whose ultimate ambition is to play the Ranji Trophy, the (unglamorous) pinnacle of Indian domestic cricket.

A still from 'Kaun Pravin Tambe?'

In short, there is no discernible rhythm to Tambe’s arc; his is a story that doesn’t behave like a story. He starts in the mid-1980s as a medium pacer and enters a loop of bad luck, bad timing, bad form and family obligations. There’s no prospect of a redemptive comeback or rise because life keeps happening to him. There are times when it emerges that he just isn’t good enough, stuck in the hustle-machinery and hobby-coded patterns of shield cricket and amateur competitions (where he sells his man-of-the-match prizes for extra household income).

Kaun Pravin Tambe? is a great Mumbai movie. It perceives the role of the big city — its sweaty connectivity, fields, trains, its addictive relationship with a sport that gives its players the temporary illusion of space — in an average resident’s obsession with the game. The place is mythologised as the heart of Indian cricket, where some of the country’s most iconic players have derived their mental strength from the survival impulses of everyday living. But this is the first film to delve into the language of that heartbeat.

The details are uncanny. When Tambe finds himself in the hospital with a fractured leg, the stern surgeon suddenly softens — and geeks out on spin techniques — when he’s informed that his patient plays club cricket. Tambe’s dance-bar stint happens when he’s transitioning from medium pace to leg spin; his mind is so consumed by the new craft that even the sight of a girl’s fluid wrist movement gives him ideas for his next session. He uses his jobs — first as a diamond sorter, then as a waiter — to sharpen his on-field instincts and stay “young”. His tennis-ball tournament fame is rewarded in distinctly Maharashtrian prize ceremonies: like a group of women blessing him with a thali-and-lamp ritual on stage. Tambe’s switch to leg spin is a product of necessity, not aptitude. His fracture forces him to change his skill set and restart at an age most players retire at. Talpade’s performance is so emotionally authentic that Tambe’s spin bowling action — his little leap at the crease; his follow-through after delivery — is a direct descendent of his medium pace.

There’s also the way the film stages little reminders of his age. Early on, Tambe bumps into a batsman’s dad, who was once his contemporary in the ’80s; “Still trying, Tambe?” becomes a common greeting. In his chawl, a cranky old neighbour complains to Tambe about the kids playing downstairs: “First it was you, now it’s them; there’s no respite!” The continuity of his grit is established every few scenes. The film also unfolds with a smug sports journalist, Rajat Sanyal (Parambrata Chatterjee), as the narrator. Sanyal’s antagonism is a bit over the top; he targets Tambe from the beginning and behaves like a villain in a narrative that doesn’t quite need one. He’s the sort of bitter writer who blames an “illiterate” readership when his book doesn’t do well. (We’ve all been there). When I first watched the film, this character felt like a lazy cliche. Sanyal’s a failed cricketer himself, so he uses his profession as a medium of revenge.

But on second viewing, Sanyal’s persona exists to highlight the journalist-player subculture. Tambe’s story is so unconventional that it dismantles the scrutiny of those hired to write about it. Sanyal is simply a surrogate for a society wired to pull down dreamers to normalise its own shortcomings. We fear people like Pravin Tambe because he elevates the ordinary instead of chasing the extraordinary. Seeing him defy the odds makes the rulebook go for a toss, therefore exposing the stories we tell ourselves — the excuses and compromises, the conspiracies and wounds — to lead a low-stakes life.

A still from 'Kaun Pravin Tambe?'

Tambe seems to be hoping for the kind of miracle one only reads about — the kind where a scout randomly spots his leg-break on a humid evening and fast-tracks him into the folds of first-class cricket. Generations of prodigies come and go; he remains. His miracle, however, is that he has to wait for one. Unlike most films, this one refuses to milk the payoff. The call from Dravid, his IPL debut and his long-awaited Ranji debut barely account for the last 15 minutes of the film’s 134-minute length. What this does is imply that Tambe’s open-ended journey never qualified for a three-act structure; the process itself morphed into the destination along the way. Pravin Tambe could’ve played one game and faded back into oblivion. But his T20 franchise career did full justice to his late-blooming reputation; he thrived till 48. This “success” felt like a footnote, though. For a man who kept running out of time, timelessness became his legacy. He never played for India because maybe he didn’t need to. Instead, he became the India that others play for. And, as this appropriately low-key film shows, he became the answer after the question mark.