Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh, who will soon be seen portraying Kapil Dev, captain of the 1983 cricket World Cup-winning team, in the upcoming sports biopic '83', delved into the intricacies of portraying the character for the big screen.
Helmed by director Kabir Khan, '83' revolves around India's historical 1983 cricket World Cup win. Talking about his role, the 'Padmaavat' actor stated that bowling like Kapil was the most difficult aspect of his character development.
Ranveer said, "He has a very unique bowling action and his bio-mechanics are very unique to him. My body is very different from his so I had to transform my physicality drastically in order to achieve it. It took a long time, in fact, months to perfect the action. Initially, my body was too heavy because I was coming off of the shoot of 'Simmba'."
He further spoke about Balwinder Singh Sandhu, the legend of the 83-world cup who was also Ranveer's coach and said, "Our coach noticed that my body was too heavy and he said jab tu run-up mein aata hai toh tu aisa lagta hai ki pehelwan bowling karne aa raha hai. And he sent me away for a month just to change my physicality to bring it closer to Kapil's athleticism and then once I did that, I started making some headway."
"I was playing cricket for 4 hours a day for 6 months and doing physical conditioning for 2 hours a day for those 6 months. Four months of prep and 2-3 months of shoot, I put in a lot of hours," added the actor.
Ranveer's metamorphosis for becoming the cricketer pushed his body to its limit.
"There were a few injuries along the way but it was very important for me to crack his action because it is an iconic bowling action and all his admirers will be looking out for whether I did it right or not. More importantly for him to feel that I got it right and for me to feel that I got it right and for it just spot on in the film and I had to put in the work but it was very fulfilling. At the end of the process, I have become a decent enough bowler also," said Ranveer.
He continued, "Apart from Balwinder Singh Sandhu I had a lot of help from our coach Rajiv Mehra and there were several sessions that I did on the pitch with Kapil himself who had his inputs also to offer."
Along with Ranveer, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Jiiva, Saqib Saleem, Jatin Sarna, Chirag Patil, Dinker Sharma, Nishant Dahiya, Sahil Khattar, Ammy Virk, Harrdy Sandhu, Addinath Kothare, Dhairya Karwa, R Badree and Pankaj Tripathi, are also a part of the film.
Interestingly, Deepika Padukone will be seen playing Romi, Kapil Dev's wife in '83', which will hit the big screen on December 24 in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
( With inputs from ANI )
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