For an enterprise that continues reinventing the wheel, as a long way as showcasing heroism is concerned, Telugu cinema hasn’t quite embraced sports dramas. Ironically, one of the earliest instances of a true blue sports activities-primarily based biopic became made in Telugu when former athlete Ashwini Nachappa performed herself in a sports activities drama titled Ashwini (1991).
Although there had been a select few movies like Guru, Sye, Golconda High School, Bheemli Kabbadi Jattu, Okkadu, Amma Nanna O Tamil Ammayi, and Thammudu during the last two decades, Telugu filmmakers and actors haven’t explored the genre consistently, until now.
In April by myself, Tollywood noticed Naga Chaitanya flip cricketer for Majili and Nani starrer Jersey had the actor playing a growing older cricketer who makes a dramatic comeback to a Ranji team. And then, there’s the Aishwarya Rajesh starrer Mismatch which has her gambling a wrestler, apart from the Telugu remake of her Tamil cricket-primarily based movie, Kanaa; an untitled boxing drama starring Varun Tej; and a biopic of Pullela Gopichand, starring Sudheer Babu within the making.
With movies like Majili and Jersey placing a chord with the target audience this 12 months, many accept as true with that the sports drama may thoroughly be the subsequent large component in Telugu cinema. Talking about the modern fashion of sports activities dramas in Telugu, Nani says, “I didn’t recognize that there was a fashion of sports dramas in Telugu inside the first area. When Gowtam narrated the tale, I felt it was both stunning and a difficult film for me as an actor. It’s simplest then that it struck me that there are very few Telugu films which focus on sports. It’s excessive time we made sports activities dramas in Telugu, in place of simply experience looking them whilst they may be made in different languages.”
Jersey is a true blue sports activities drama and the crew went all out to make it look as genuine as possible. The makers had the help of Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to use its emblems, and a huge phase of the film was shot in Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium in Hyderabad. Nani himself needed to go through rigorous training at Daniels Cricket Academy for almost 70 days to put together for his role as a cricketer.
“It becomes not about simply playing cricket which I knew. I might be mendacity if I said that I knew a way to play cricket at a professional degree. My education at Daniels Academy helped me get my frame language right. Everything needed to look so convincing which you need to believe that Arjun (his character in Jersey) is without a doubt a player who deserves to win. Both Gowtam and I had been clear that it became vital due to the fact if the target audience doesn’t believe that Arjun is a good cricketer, then they won’t root for something else within the film,” Nani adds.
Prior to Jersey’s launch, there have been quite a few chatters about it sharing a few thematic similarities with the Naga Chaitanya-Samantha starrer Majili considering both the films had cricket as a backdrop. However, Gowtam Tinnanuri, director of Jersey, avers that it was only an accident that each the films had their protagonists as cricketers.
“Although both the films launched across the identical time, I’m positive that the notion of making a cricket-based movie might have been playing on Shiva Nirvana’s (director of Majili) thoughts for a long term now. It’s the identical in my case, too. There have been no recent blockbusters in Telugu which kick-started this trend of sports dramas inside the industry. And returned once I started out writing the script, there weren’t as many Telugu movies on this genre either. What made Jersey unique, from my factor of view, is that this turned into more approximately one character and how he evolves over a period of time, in place of how a group comes collectively. The idea changed into to make a film about an overdue bloomer who’s also an underdog, and cricket was a very good backdrop to relate the tale. Even though there’s a will to be triumphant, the most important hurdle is that the age and bodily health aren’t in your control in any such situation,” Gowtam explains.
