‘Sachin is a hero... Dhoni is flashy’

While Team India was getting walloped in Australia, comedians from Down Under were in Kolkata shooting a film about a team that wins friends but loses matches. Priyanka Dasgupta spent an afternoon on set.
Cricket and India are linked, not just for the country’s 1.22 billion, but visitors too. On his last visit to India, Australian actor Damon Gameau travelled from the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar to Chennai by bus and train before finally hopping into a cab to make it to the MA Chidambaram stadium.India was playing Australia, and Gameau and his buddy were the only Australians in the stands. With India losing, they ended up being the soul duo among thousands, cheering the winners hoarse.
Years later, Gameau, who has acted in The Tracker, and US series How I Met Your Mother, was back again, thanks to cricket. Playing the lead in Boyd Hicklin’s cricket comedy, Save Your Legs!, Gameau is at the centre of a D-grade cricket team that takes off on an audacious tour of India, winning friends along the way but losing matches. On a mellow afternoon at Vivekananda Park in South Kolkata, Gameau and co-actors Brendan Cowell and Stephen Curry break for lunch over willow talk. The Symonds-Harbhajan monkeygate wound has healed. Racial comments are “disgusting”, and for Curry, a Sachin Tendulkar fan, the greatest kick is to play a character who is a Sachin fan too. “Sachin is a big hero for us. I was so disappointed when he didn’t bag his 100th Test hundred. Dhoni is flashy, but a good 20-20 player,” says Curry, a popular comedian back home. At a distance stands Gameau, listening to a local band play a tune that’s a suspicious off-key version of Kolaveri Di, although it’s meant to dish out a sports anthem.
The music grows louder. Director Hicklin is happy that the band has finally got the tune right, and signals Indian line producer, Pravesh Sahni, to ensure the cast has padded up again. Cowell has some advice for the boys in blue: “Look at how Michael Clarke had to rebuild the side after Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath left. Kohli and Ashwin are the Indian players of the future. Pitching for the right balance between experience and youth will get Team India back in form.”