I haven’t played Dhoni, I am Dhoni, says Sushant Singh Rajput

The first official poster of Neeraj Pandey’s Dhoni biopic — Dhoni The Untold Story —was released on the cricketer’s 35th birthday on July 7. Sushant Singh Rajput who plays the man onscreen is overwhelmed at the opportunity. He says, “There are few films and characters that offer you a chance at being a better human being. This is one such opportunity. I have been a huge fan of Dhoni and seen him play for ten years or so. The biggest challenge for me was to convince myself that I was Dhoni. But now I can comfortably say that I haven’t played Dhoni, I am Dhoni.”

But the fan boy won’t show up on screen. “There is a thin line between impersonation and characterisation. I had to make sure I don’t cross over to mimicry. Dhoni has a million fans and they shouldn’t get a visual jerk in the first few frames. I have done my homework and I think I’ll be able to communicate his thought process.”

That is a wish that former cricketer Sunil Gavaskar held close too. “Given a chance I’d like to be in the mind of Dhoni just once to understand what he is thinking,” he had said. “I guess I am going where Gavaskar saab wanted to. I’ve tried to walk on Dhoni’s footprints in the sand, going wherever he has been. I’ve researched him as much as possible, stayed in the places that he has. His personality has changed. He isn’t the same physically or emotionally as he was five years ago.”

Interestingly, Sushant’s association with cricket goes back a long way. “My sister Mitu is a state-level cricketer. I was a national-level player too. In fact, I wanted to take it up as a profession when I was in class eight or nine. But as the youngest and only son, I was expected to shine in academics, so I chose to be an engineer. I gave up my dream once, I wouldn’t do it a second time.”