Kaun Pravin Tambe? Review: Sports Biopic Is Both Entertaining And Engaging

Cast: Shreyas Talpade, Parambrata Chaterjee, Arun Nalawade, Chhaya Kadam

Director: Jayprad Desai

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5) 

Hindi sports biopics are notorious for their leaden-footed flirting with outswingers that are best left alone. It is, therefore, pleasantly surprising to stumble upon a film like Kaun Pravin Tambe?, which plays with an absolutely straight bat as it pieces together a fascinating life story that is much more about dour tenacity than about flashy achievements and staggering statistics.

Director Jayprad Desai (Kaun Pravin Tambe? is his first Hindi film and second feature after the Marathi-language Nagrik) and screenwriter Kiran Yadnyopavit (himself a notable filmmaker and actor) keep it impressively simple as they home in on a Mulund cricketer who spent the best years of his life slogging away in Times Shield matches in the hope of breaking into the Mumbai Ranji Trophy squad. The seasons rolled by but Pravin Tambe did not make the grade until he was on the wrong side of 40.

That is not to say that Kaun Pravin Tambe?, streaming on Disney+Hotstar, isn't occasionally lured into attempting false, airy-fairy strokes. In seeking to whip up some drama around the constant resistance and reverses that the protagonist faced as he laboured on the fringes of a game he loved to distraction, it throws in a preening sports journo (Parambrata Chatterjee) who is scornful of Tambe, dismissing him repeatedly as a 'gully-level' cricketer who has no future in the higher leagues of the game.

The pen-pusher is an entirely superfluous addition to the otherwise perfectly self-contained tale. His inclusion is clearly meant to put up a sort of villain, a stumbling block and armchair critic, to the underdog-hero, not only betrays hazy knowledge of how journalism works, it also leads to a highly cringeworthy sequence. As a consequence of a bet that he loses, the chastened journalist has to cross-dress as a woman and mimic a thali-and-lamps ritual that is common at Mumbai's tennis ball cricket tournaments. A wide ball by a fair margin.

Kaun Pravin Tambe?, produced by Fox Star Studios in association with Friday Filmworks and Bootroom Sports, has enough innate meat not to require extraneous elements in order to generate conflict and create a context for the cricketer's painstaking and painful progress through the ranks.

His career is capped by an incredible stroke of luck that, thanks to the intervention of Rahul Dravid (who puts in an appearance as himself in the film's prelude besides being impersonated by actor Chirag Trivedi later on) and former India fast bowler and director of the D.Y Patil Sports Academy Abey Kuruvilla (Nitin Rao), pitchforks him into the Indian Premier League (IPL) fold without ever having played a single first-class game.

Tambe, a Mumbai 'Everyman' with a dream that he simply would not give up on, was 41 years old when he donned the Rajasthan Royals colours. His first-season IPL performance helped him fulfil his life's ambition of representing Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy. What a story! Kaun Pravin Tambe?, barring the occasional avoidable swish that puts nothing of import on the scoreboard, does justice to the man and what he represents.

What works wonderfully well for Kaun Pravin Tambe? is the casting of Shreyas Talpade, the Marathi and Hindi cinema actor who rarely gets his due. As the titular medium pacer, Talpade is absolutely fabulous. He captures, with consistent composure, the undying optimism that keeps the man going as well as the recurrent disappointments that threaten to derail his career.

The film, of course, has its share of the usual biopic tics but that does not dilute the realistic tone and tenor that director Desai banks upon for the most part. Tambe receives the unstinted support of friends and fellow cricketers, besides active encouragement from his elder brother (Varoon Varma). But life isn't a bed of roses for the lower middle-class boy who must earn his keep and shoulder the responsibility of a wife and two children.

His wife Vaishali (Anjali Patil, who holds her own all through) and his mother (Chhaya Kadam, terrific as always) are often sceptical of Tambe's chances. But even as life seems to pass him by and fill him with bitterness, the man refuses to let go. His exploits as a military-medium bowler who switches to leg-spin at the behest of coach Vidyadhar Paradkar (Ashish Vidyarthy), who provides another dimension to Tambe's evolution as a cricketer and a man, keep him and the talent spotters interested.

Tambe, given the way he is wired, focuses more on the game than on the 'player quota' jobs that he lands and loses. Exploited by one company and pushed to the wall, he even waits tables at a bar - which provides the errant journalist another pretext to belittle the man. But Tambe ignores the jibes and soldiers on against the odds stacked against him. We know how the story is going to end and yet we stay invested in it. That is this film's biggest triumph.

"Life ho ya match, all you need is a good over," Paradkar says Tambe. But the protracted wait for that one life-changing over is what this film is about. It depicts, in all its starkness, the nature of the struggle and the many challenges that a man must face in a city that fuels as many dreams as it thwarts.

Kaun Pravin Tambe? does well to frequently see the lighter side of things. The film does not shy away from playing up the humour inherent in the ageing but physically fit Tambe's unwavering perseverance. In fact, parts of the film also manage to convey the absurdity of the late bloomer's seemingly impossible dream.

With Shreyas Talpade hitting the sweet spot with unfailing regularity and director Jayprad Desai keeping a tight, measured rein on the flow of the story, Kaun Pravin Tambe? finds almost all the answers that it needs to formulate a meaningful statement on the virtues of never giving up. It is both entertaining and engaging.