Like history, it’s the victorious who define and shape the narrative of a sports film. Bollywood, like Hollywood, makes sports films about winning—against all odds, with tears and roaring climactic cheers. When everything is on the line for a team or an athlete, they win, usually in as noble and resolutely masculine a way as possible. The sports film also plays out with one underlining utopian view of the world that assumes that anyone who works hard and is determined to win and who plays by the rules, eventually wins. The genre’s safest fuel is the underdog, and a filtered, simplistic version of underdog psychology.
Gowtam Tinnanuri’s Jersey, a remake of the 2019 Telegu film of the same name, is firmly entrenched in that canon of sports films.
At the peak of his career, Arjun Talwar (Shahid Kapoor), a volatile man and fiery batsman in the Punjab Ranji Trophy team, gives up his life’s biggest passion and gift, which is being on the cricket crease with a Sehwag-style cricketing credo: See ball, hit ball. Arjun hardly ever runs between wickets—he is effortless at raising the ball for sixes and fours. As we eventually realise in a climactic twist, his motive behind this drastic decision is not just that he does not make it to the national team. After cricket, his personal life is a mess. He loses the government job that he landed through his sports background. His wife Vidya (Mrunal Thakur) works at a hotel reception desk and is frugal so the family can make ends meet. Arjun’s tryst with Chandigarh’s majestic Mohali Stadium is now early morning sit-outs outside the boundary watching his pre-teen son Kittu (Ronit Kamra) train under his former coach (Pankaj Kapoor) who was his only support, motivator, guide and proxy parent while he grew up playing the sport. On his birthday, Kittu asks his father for an Indian team jersey. Arjun does not have the money and Vidya needs to be frugal with her hard-earned cash so the family can make ends meet with her meagre salary. Arjun is stagnant, downbeat and depressed. The relationship between Arjun and Vidya has soured because according to Vidya, Arjun walks away from every opportunity, an escapist that she is having a hard time living with. When his coach and friends force him to play a charity match on home grounds, Arjun shows his mettle, as if a decade had not passed. Far from rusty, he is an inspired hitter and takes the home team to a dream, cliff-hanger victory. He is now a hero in his son’s eyes, which goads him on start from where he left off—play until he gets a spot in the national team. What follows is an impossible Ranji dream—Arjun takes Punjab to a win at the finals against the season’s hottest team.
Arjun’s story inspires a book and a celebration that reveal Arjun’s real secret behind his decision to quit cricket at the pinnacle of his sporting prowess.
The writers—director Tinnanuri, Sidharth Singh and Garima Wahal—go for broad strokes and tear-jerker scenarios to build momentum. Every emotion has the pitch and language of a massy sports film. Every exaggerated hero moment gets stretched beyond belief, extending the film’s running time to a tedious length, way beyond two hours.
Kapoor hasn’t been in a hefty lead role in some time, and with Jersey, he is clearly swinging his bat to attract box office success—how formulaic a Bollywood film is, is often proportional to how successful it will be at the box office. Perhaps not always with the desired result.
Decent acting keeps the film halfway honest and tolerable. Kapoor turns in a diligent, but monotone impersonation of a sports hero gone chain-smoking melancholic, which at least hints at the private man behind the public image. His seraphic smile conceals conceals his shadows. Thakur as Vidya is charming without surprises or edge. Pankaj Kapoor is convincingly the gruff but benevolent father-figure prototype—his comfort with the Punjabi tongue and manners make it more convincing.
Arjun’s sporting masculinity is textbook—a man who sacrifices his will and passion when he loses the ability to hit and win. It is impossible for Arjun to realise that often the most heroic thing of all is to accept failure. The character has no dualities, complexities or nuances. While winning, brash behaviour and tricks of the bat empowered him. While he was at the top of his game at a contact sport, his second innings is defined by a weakness that is couched by a passive hatred of the world. This is what new-age psychology defines as toxic masculinity.
Films about sports are novel and insightful when other versions of manliness drive them—and some such films are now available. Films such as Chloé Zhao’s The Rider (2017) are showing us the flipside of the winning-against-all-odds mentality, which is not only that to lose is part of the game, but that losing, like the crushing weight of the pressure to win can really mess you up. Athletes in personal and physical crises illuminate the dark side of sports—Arjun Talwar stays predictably close to the tried-and-tested trajectory, his story glorifying the suffering and the sacrifice that go into making a hero who can only be worshipped like an infallible god. That’s what makes Jersey a textbook-inspiring, but stuffy and stodgy film.
Jersey released in theatres on April 22, 2022.
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