Just earlier this month, cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni politely turned down an invitation to inaugurate a pavilion named after him at the JSCA International Stadium Complex in his hometown of Ranchi, Jharkhand. For his fans, this is yet another anecdote of his restraint and humility that weaves itself into the lore surrounding him. With Hotstar Specials’ recently-released docuseries, Roar of the Lion , writer Kausar Munir says people will get a glimpse of what’s beyond his reserved nature. “He personifies that proverb ‘still waters run deep’,” she shares. “There’s a lot of depth, a lot going on, [though he] is unruffled on the surface.”
Rise, fall and comeback
Joining Munir for this chat at Bandra’s Taj Lands End is executive producer Kabir Khan, and the two talk about the mini-series which unpacks the story of the Indian Premier League (IPL) team, Chennai Super Kings (CSK), under Dhoni’s leadership. It will address the team’s two-year suspension for match-fixing, and its triumphant 2018 comeback (also its third IPL win). “Captain Cool [has] maintained a dignified silence about the match-fixing allegations and those two years — in a certain sense — in exile,” says Khan. “But the show happened because he was ready to talk about it.”
Roar of the Lion, directed by Amir Rizvi, splices together accounts from the team’s players, some fans, and even N Srinivasan, former President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The narrative unfolds across locations like Ranchi, Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, and even crosses the Indian Ocean to reach Australia. “Although the geographical locations are so disparate, there is an emotional vocabulary which is the thread that ties everything together,” adds Munir.
Writer Kausar Munir (left) and Executive Producer Kabir Khan at Taj Lands End, Bandra
Almost scripted
The “inspirational” genre of sports dramas has long piqued the interest of audiences. The 2016 biopic on Dhoni, Neeraj Pandey’s MS Dhoni: The Untold Story , managed to draw crowds. In contrast, the documentary on Sachin Tendulkar, Sachin: A Billion Dreams (2017), didn’t fare as well, possibly because of its format. A web series, Khan says, offers more room for experimentation. “As a filmmaker [it’s] liberating because you don’t need to take on the pressures of doing something to get the opening figures. [Content] on OTT (over-the-top) platforms is for posterity,” he says.
Khan shares that it was the striking drama of CSK’s journey that urged him to build a series around the team. Munir concurs, adding, “[Their story has] a classic structure. The rise, the fall, the rise again, and that great final flourish. The reality of it was just played out to a perfect script which was unwritten.” And in chronicling this tale of “the human spirit”, Khan and Munir stress that viewers don’t need to understand cricket to appreciate that.
Drama guaranteed
While that may be the case, both have been long-standing cricket enthusiasts. In fact, in Kabul Express (2006), Khan’s debut in Bollywood, a humorous exchange between characters has them arguing about who’s the better all-rounder, Kapil Dev or Imran Khan. “Which I’m still struggling with,” laughs Khan, who is currently working on ’83, a Ranveer Singh-starrer that focusses on the 1983 World Cup win under Kapil Dev’s captaincy.
Apart from a shared love for the sport, Khan and Munir have a lot more in common. And strangely enough, both of them started off in the industry with documentary filmmaking.
While Munir initially researched and wrote for Kashmiri documentary filmmaker Mohiuddin Mirza, Khan was a cinematographer for a Discovery Channel documentary, titled Beyond the Himalayas (1996), before he directed The Forgotten Army (1999) about Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army. Though it seems like they’ve come full circle, Khan finds that classifying a film as a documentary is limiting. “I feel today those definitions are passé. What format or treatment you use is something the audience forgets,” he says, “A documentary like Wild Wild Country (2018) on Netflix is pure drama. It’s the same with Roar of the Lion .”
Apart from ’83 , Khan is also finishing up a mini-series for Amazon that’s based on his The Forgotten Army. Munir only discloses that she has a number of upcoming projects — from more Hotstar Specials, to other films and songs. “It’s an exciting time to be a writer,” she concludes.
Roar of the Lion is streaming now on Hotstar
