We’ve shown Sachin as iconic yet vulnerable, says Ravi Bhagchandka

The trailer of the eagerly awaited Sachin Tendulkar bio-pic, Sachin: A Billion Dreams shows the iconic cricketer’s life in ‘glow’-motion and has set high expectation from fans. Producer Ravi Bhagchandka is a relieved man. “It took us four years to complete this dream project. Encapsulating the life and achievements of someone as imposing as Sachin Tendulkar is not easy. Where does one begin? Where does it end? We had to find the right starting point and the correct place to end our story of Sachin Tendulkar,” he says.

To Ravi’s relief, Sachin supported the project from the word go. “We were very clear that we won't make the film with an actor. With due respect to all other bio-pics, an actor playing a real-life character always looks like ‘acting’. We wanted the real Sachin in our film, or no film at all.”

Not only Sachin, but also his wife Anjali Tendulkar agreed to support the film. “We got the rarest of footage of Sachin on the field. We’ve shown Sachin’s rise, and how he continued to be a man rooted to his values, devoted to family and to the country. At one point in the film, Sachin says that, to him, playing cricket is like going to the temple. For anyone to excel in his field of work, it is essential to treat your work as worship.”

It helped that Ravi has known Sachin for a long time. “We are friends. I used to be a struggling cricketer myself. We were very clear that we would show Sachin as iconic yet vulnerable. So we have tackled the problems that he faced in his career.” But the emphasis, says Ravi, is on positivity.

Ask him why they roped in a British director for the project and he says, “We wanted an outsider’s perspective on Sachin’s life. He is too close to all Indians for anyone of us to dare to look at his life objectively.”

The  film is being dubbed in multiple languages and Sachin has done all his lines in three of the versions — Hindi, English and Marathi.  Sachin: A  Billion Dreams opens a month after Baabubali 2. Quips Ravi, “The same distributor (Anil Thadani) who is releasing Baahubali 2 is also releasing our film. I keep telling him, ‘You have the fictional Baahubali and then you have the real Baahubali coming up’.”