'SACHIN: A BILLION DREAMS' TUGS AT THE EMOTIONS

The film about Tendulkar's life won't satisfy scholars of the cricketer's career... but it remains very watchable

How do you tell the story that’s been told a thousand times?

That was the conundrum presenting director James Erskine when faced with the task of putting Sachin Tendulkar’s life on the big screen.

Tendulkar has lived life under a microscope since he made his international debut as a prodigious 16-year-old in 1989, his every step and sentence analysed and pored over in excruciating detail.

His millions of followers know everything they possibly can about his time in an India shirt, his struggles with the captaincy, his 100 centuries and a long wait for World Cup glory - some, as Sachin: A Billion Dreams shows, can recite his every statistic on demand.

So what to give the fans who know everything?

Erskine doesn’t try to nudge and nurdle his way around the problem, and his film is much more T20 than Test match.

^{Sachin Tendulkar before his India debut in 1989}

Told chronologically, it charts Tendulkar’s rise using dramatised scenes of his childhood adapted from conversations with several of his living relatives, including his mother Rajani and closest brother Ajit, through his formative years as a teenager in the India team to national icon and global celebrity.

An absorbing and evocative soundtrack melts rare family video with famous scenes of Tendulkar at the crease, as Erskine tugs at emotions willingly and freely.

For those who have lived outside cricket’s bubble and no nothing of India’s love affair with their greatest ever sportsman, this is an illuminating ride.

By intermingling footage of historical events with that of Tendulkar’s most exceptional innings, Erskine explicitly highlights the importance of the Little Master’s role within the country’s popular culture during times of change, upheaval and terror.

The casual viewer, then, will learn plenty about just how pivotal Tendulkar has been in India’s recent past and how some of the snatch quotes which litter the opening minutes, though superficially stuffed with hyperbole, could not be more true.

“Sachin is not so much an icon as an emotion.”

“Amidst all of this chaos there is one order.”

“You can visualise India through the prism of Sachin Tendulkar”.

It is impossible not to get caught up in the story’s rhythm and flow, which trots along like a perfectly-planned run chase.

For the Tendulkar scholar, the pickings are somewhat slimmer. The more complex and political elements of his career - his relationship with Mohammad Azharuddin, the match-fixing scandal and Greg Chappell’s ill-fated reign as India coach - are covered only in passing.

Anyone who wants a more forensic account of Indian cricket politics won’t find what they crave here. But Sachin: A Billion Dreams never sets out to be an authority on the inner circle at the BCCI. This isn’t idol-worship but it is most certainly a tribute to its subject.

Those more interested in what makes Tendulkar tick are thoroughly indulged.

His relationship with his father, Ramesh, and his coach, Ramakant Achrekar, are explored in detail - and Ajit’s importance in the Sachin story is rammed home.

But of all the many characters to play leading roles, it is Tendulkar’s wife Anjali whose voice is most engaging and whose impact most

The film describes the pair’s first encounter - in a crowded airport terminal - and gives substantial air time to Anjani’s descriptions of what life is like as Mrs Tendulkar.

She explains her decision to relinquish a medical career to bring up the couple’s two children, Sara and Arjun, and illustrates how cricket lived her husband as much as the other way around.

^{Tendulkar celebrates winning the World Cup in 2011}

The sport came first, she says at one point, and that was okay.

No wonder, then, that on the day of his retirement Tendulkar described his marriage as “the best partnership I’ve ever had”.

Sachin: A Billion Dreams enjoys tremendous access to the man it is portraying - tracking him from one side of the world to the other - and that is its primary charm.

We learn from Shane Warne about Tendulkar’s love of Dire Straits, discover his penchant for pranks which began when as child he let down the tyres of neighbours’ cars and continue today as he flies his friends around the world on a private let.

We see him in the nets with his son in London, driving a convertible car through the Yorkshire Dales with his wife at his side and playing water polo in Goa with his friends.

We are invited to feel the same way about Tendulkar as his millions of adoring fans do back in his homeland and, for two hours, it’s hard not to oblige.

3.5/5

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SACHIN: A BILLION DREAMS IS AVAILABLE ON DVD & DIGITAL HD NOW

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