9. Lagaan - 2001

• While Lagaan is the 4th Hindi film about cricket, there’s been only one English film on the game: The Final Test (1953), with Jack Warner and Robert Morley.
• The building the film team had rented in Bhuj was decimated in the Gujarat quake
• Aamir Khan refused to act in Lagaan when Gowariker first approached him with the script. But after it was reworked, Khan decided to produce it himself.
• The cast had 150 actors from local theatre groups in and around Bhuj

It’s perhaps the film industry’s greatest instance of ensemble acting. Gowariker has assembled a cast of little-known or previously unnoticed yet talented actors to play the rustic cricketers: Deva, Goli, Kachra, Lakha, Bhura, Ismail and others—a blacksmith, a potter, a wood-cutter, a chicken farmer, a temple guardian, a wild-haired idiot savant and, of course, the mandatory Sikh, Dalit and Muslim. Mini India takes on the rulers in a clash of civilisations.

The signal triumph of the film is that though it exploits every nuance of the laws of cricket for its plot twists, its appeal is universal. Even those who know nothing of the game respond ecstatically to Lagaan. For finally, it’s not about a cricket match but some universal human values. In our list of 10 Best Hindi films, it is the only one with an unambiguously happy ending. This is hardly surprising; Lagaan is perhaps the greatest feelgood Hindi film ever.

The little-noticed fact, however, is that the nail-biting climax is derived from a cricketing illegality. The match is for a fixed duration of three days. The Brits play first, with no restriction on how long they can bat. The Champaner XI then has to outscore them in the time remaining. The laws of cricket have never allowed such a match. Under the Lagaan rules, the British could have batted for two-and-a-half days and left the Champaner XI three hours to score the requisite runs or lose the match. But hardly anyone noticed—or cared.

(All essays by Madhu Jain and Namrata Joshi. Posters courtesy Osian’s—Connoisseurs of Art Archive Collection.)