Azhar leads his team to victory and soon becomes a successful Captain. While playing in an India–Pakistan match, Javed taunts Azhar, telling Azhar his Muslim heritage would be a better fit for the Pakistan team. But Kapil supports and encourages him to focus on his duty. Some senior players like Manoj, Ravi and Navjot, resent Azhar's appointment as Captain, not wishing to take orders from a younger and less experienced player. Azhar initially fears getting dropped from the team, but is surprised when he is offered the position of team Captain. After a loss against Pakistan in 1991, the President of Cricket Board calls Azhar for a one-to-one meeting. Azhar soon marries Naureen and they both begin a happy married life.
Nonetheless, he participates in the match, in accordance with his grandfather's last wish.Īzhar impresses the selectors, sealing his place in Team India and he soon becomes a national hero by scoring 3 consecutive centuries in his first 3 Test innings. Young Azhar goes for an Indian team selection match to Mumbai, where on the match day he receives the bad news of his grandfather's death. His grandfather dreamt of Azhar playing 100 tests for Team India and motivates a soft-spoken young Azhar to answer his rivals with his batting skills. The story shifts back to 1963, when Azhar was born to a comfortable middle-class family in Hyderabad. Azhar decides to challenge the ban in court with the help of his lawyer friend Reddy. The Indian cricket board slaps a life-ban on him.
Nope, this ‘Azhar’ doesn’t hit it out of the stadium.The film begins with Indian cricketer Azhar scoring a century in his 99th test match, but he soon faces allegations of match-fixing as his name has been linked with a London based bookie M.K. This could have been a great cautionary tale about a great sport at a time when it was just becoming the arena it has grown into-full of big money and glamour, bigger endorsements and never-ending temptations : it is, instead, an inept ‘tamasha’, not very different from the stuff Bollywood churns out, the cricket just the superstructure for tired song-and-dance and melodrama, in living rooms and court-rooms. Prachi Desai is rouged and demure and distressed, Nargis Fakhri as Sangeeta ( not, never, Bijlani) is pouty, Lara Dutta as the lawyer for the cricket council ( not, never, BCCI), is svelte but miscast, and Roy Kapur struggles with a bad wig and exaggerated accent, and Sharma as the bookie who makes the advances, is perenially oily. But Hashmi is earnest, and the only saving grace here. Watch: Here’s what audience has to say about Emraan Hashmi starrer Azhar on Day One:Įmraan Hashmi, usually so watchable, is buried under the inept script, which hints at shadowy dons and the guilty parties in a fuzzy, indistinct manner. Not only is there a parade of Kapils and Sachins (no, gasp, Dev or Tendulkar), the eponymous hero is not, double gasp, Mohammad Azharduddin but `Azhar Mohd’ who just happens to be a Hyderabad lad, whose affections for a Bollywood starlet lead him to abandon his first wife, and whose accidental dealings with a bookie leads him into abyss. Oops, sorry, this ain’t no bio-pic, ‘coz, look momma, it names no names. The film remains strangely ambivalent about its hero while mouthing ‘seeti-maar’ dialogue about ‘desh’ and ‘qaum’: to have made the point the way it needed to be made, the film needed to have been braver and sharper. You can also see that it’s been made to clear the real player’s name: a court did over-turn the ban but the whole process took so long that it became besides the point. (Also read: Azhar impresses viewers on Day One of release) ‘Azhar’ was presumably made because it had such a controversial figure at its centre, arising out of the fixing-maches-for-money controversy itself, which had such a deep-seated impact on the game not just nationally but internationally.
Such is the extent of craven-ness on display that one of the most gripping cricketing stories of our time, featuring one of the most colourful captains of the Indian cricket team, is turned into a dull, dispirited tale.
Using only first names as a dissembling tactic while referring to actual events and dates and places and times, is silly enough.