Bandon Mein Tha Dum is enjoyable but ultimately needless

Depending on who you ask, what generation you consider as the sample size there are a number of performances the Indian cricket team has delivered overseas that ought to have its own little homage. The world cup victory in 1983 has been turned into a fully-fledged film and there are obviously others, the Kolkata miracle, that Natwest final and India’s first test win down under in Australia. The 2021 series victory, though, represents possibly India’s greatest comeback in a cricketing series. Voot Select’s Bandon Mein Tha Dum is a serviceable ode that quickly hits its ceiling with little fuss. But while it does what it sets out to do, it rarely offers anything extraordinary or worth taking home with.  

 Despite statistics, subjectivity drives sport. Everyone has his or her way of playing, attacking and defending which makes sport what it is – a true form of human expression and excellence. Subjective viewing also means you prefer one player over the other, and even one victory over the other. To a generation, a teary-eyed Dravid driving through the covers for India’s first test win in Australia after 22 years was perhaps a feat in itself. Not because winning a solitary test is that big a feat but because doing it against THAT Australian side was. Some victories resonate more with others and you could argue do more in a socio-political context than others as well.

It’s hard these days to paint India as an underdog picture. We run the business of cricket, control it with an iron fist and dominate with a certain degree of authority, a sport that simply hasn’t picked up and spread to other nations. While cricket itself has become richer – IPL tv rights auction is a clue – the sport itself has stagnated to the point that we are forced to consume familiar foes and formats with dizzying regularity. It’s probably why the glamour and appeal of the IPL has sustained. Test cricket, many have professed and projected, is losing its sheen, but some our best sporting stories are still born out of the format that most purists hang onto.

Bandon Mein Tha Dum , directed by Neeraj Pandey and narrated by Jimmy Shergill is a familiar story because it didn’t even happen that long that we might have forgotten. Bold out for miserly 36 in the first test, and having lost their marquee captain Virat Kohli, the Indian team was on its knees. Written off, this team of youngsters and amateurs roared back to take not just the solitary test, but the series. It’s a story that had its fair share of twists from injuries to run-outs to hair-raising performances by debutants. Players and journalists appear themselves in the four-part film, narrating what happened behind the scenes. The most enjoyable of these is Ravichandra Ashwin, whose comfort with the camera already points to a certain future in broadcasting. “At one point I thought hawk-eye was playing in the test series as well,” he says cheekily about the many decisions that seemed to go against the side in the series.

What especially works for the series is the fact that it intends to make this underdog narrative accessible by doing the simple things well. The use of hindi grounds the story, while the refusal to use theatrics like excessive drone shots or exclusive behind-the-scenes footage prevents the film from the turning into a macabre view of a story that ought to have had its dark moments. Instead, this is a sporting film that looks at sport through the lens of authenticity rather than unnecessary sparkle. Pandey is not new to cricket as a Director and it is visible that he eyes the sport through the lens of purity as well. The only problem with the film is that it feels like an echo of a moment that should have probably been allowed to gestate before being resurrected for viewing.

The problem with the documentary format is that it overlaps with lived time, and must therefore hold over reality some sort of time-wrapped leverage. Here there is none. Without recalling India’s past history in cricket Bandon Mein Tha Dum can often feel like an exercise in PR rather than an objective analysis of a historic moment. The other problem is that when only a year has elapsed between the event and the film, it falls short of the kind of gravity that makes certain historic moments iconic and therefore timely. Inevitably, you end up overselling, however elegantly, a cricketing moment that should have been allowed to be dissected and discussed long before it was asked to ascend the mantle of greatness. Sure this series win, Rahane’s emergence as a captain and some stellar performances make for a good story, but there are several others, hidden in grainy video and dated photographs that would make not just good, but iconic stories that we are all waiting to be reminded of.

The author writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between. Views expressed are personal.

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