On Friday, R Balki’s 2023 sports drama Ghoomer returned to the theatres to celebrate India’s historic ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup triumph. On November 2, Saiyami Kher, who plays a cricketer in the film, Anina Dixit aka Ani, was in Navi Mumbai when our women in blue beat South Africa.
“DY Patil Stadium feels like a home ground to me because Ghoomer was shot there thanks to which I know the owner, Vijay Patil. I was sitting with Harman (India’s captain Harmanpreet Kaur) and Smriti’s (vice-captain Smriti Mandana) families, listening to Smriti’s dad knowledgeably discuss on-field tactics. Cricketing legends Sunil Gavaskar sir, VVS Laxman and Rohit Sharma were also there and as Harman took that last catch, the packed stadium erupted and I saw grown-up men in tears,” the actress reminisces.
She later went down to congratulate the players on the ground. “The moment was so huge they admitted it yet to sink in, but I finally understood what it feels like to win,” says Saiyami, borrowing Abhishek Bachchan’s dialogue. He plays Padam Singh Sodhi aka Paddy, a failed cricketer, surly and alcohol-sodden, who becomes Ani’s coach after she loses her right hand in a freak accident, ensuring the erstwhile batting prodigy returns to the Indian team as a spin bowler.
Saiyami has been playing cricket since she was seven and her childhood dream was to wear the Indian jersey. “I lived the dream through Ghoomer,” she beams even though like the Indian cricketers and their families, who have gone through a lot, from financial hurdles and emotional breakdowns to physical injuries, her reel life cricketing journey too was no cakewalk. Her right hand was numb from being tied up for 10-12 hours every day, with only a half-hour break for lunch, because of prosthetics. She fractured a toe, and lost the other toe nail, but continued shooting. She shares that the AD (assistant director) was really scared during the scene where Paddy makes Ani clear a patch of land for a cricket pitch because she was bleeding profusely, the thorny brambles tearing my skin. “Balki sir, thinking the blood was make-up, continued shooting. I didn’t stop him till the scene was canned, that’s how much the film meant to me!” she exclaims.
Even before Ghoomer rolled, Saiyami had to go through six months of gruelling training to get Ani’s Chinaman Googly right because the director did not want any cheat shots. Balki only agreed to a cut for the last shot since Saiyami was batting with one hand. But then changed his mind just before she was to face the camera, telling her he wanted to do the scene in one take.
“You have to hit a boundary with one hand, after that, I will leave it to you to figure how you will react as the other girls come running in from the dugout,” the filmmaker instructed. His leading lady, preoccupied with ensuring that she hit the ball for a four, had no time to reflect. “But as I saw the ball racing over the rope, I sank to my knees and burst into tears. It was the second last day of shooting and finally, I let out the emotions I had kept bottled inside for so long and just couldn’t stop crying,” Saiyami flashbacks.
After a while, she scrambled to her feet and ran towards the stands, collapsing at the boundary line. “I didn’t realise when Angad (Bedi, her supportive boyfriend Jeet) picked me up and I started walking towards Shabana masi (Azmi, her grandmother in the film), hugging her tight. Since Balki sir didn’t call ‘Cut’, the DoP (Vishal Sinha) came down for a ‘close-up’, before switching off the camera himself. It was an eight-minute shot, you see some of it on screen, some was left out,” she narrates, admitting that watching Jemimah Rodrigues’s meltdown after her match-winning century in the semi-final, she was reminded of Ghoomer’s finale.
“The way Jemi ran to her family, who had supported her through all the lows, her confession that she had cried every day in the last month, the resilience with which she picked herself up after being dropped, brought back all the emotions for me,” says Saiyami, pointing out that parallels being drawn between Shah Rukh Khan’s Chak De! India coach, Kabir Khan, and Team India’s inspirational coach, Amol Mazumdar.
After decades of hard work and heartbreak, Harmanpreet Kaur and her girls, along with former Indian cricket captains, Diana Edulji, Jhulan Goswami and Mithali Raj, finally held up the coveted Cup in front of a cheering home crowd to become role models for women across the country in other sport too. “Now, little boys will no longer say they won’t play with little girls like they did when I was young. Today, Jemimah’s knock of 127 against Australia is on par with Kapil Dev’s heroic 175 against Zimbabwe in the 1983 World Cup,” Saiyami asserts proudly.
