Ranveer Singh, Kapil Dev, Kabir Khan and Vishnu Vardhan Induri

It took over 15 months of convincing Kapil Dev, multiple flights from Hyderabad to Delhi, over seven years of the filmmaking process and an indomitable spirit for Vishnu Vardhan Induri to turn his dream of making a film on India’s 1983 World Cup victory into reality. As Kapil Dev points out, “It all started with Vishnu, and the credit for turning the 1983 victory into a film goes to him.” With the film 83 hitting cinemas today, Vishnu talks to us about his dream project. Excerpts:

I chased Kapil Dev for very long. I called him multiple times (in 2012-13). Then I heard that he was coming for an event in Chennai, and I landed up there and introduced myself as the one calling him persistently for an appointment. When he said he wasn’t keen on having a film made on the win, I said, ‘Sir this story has to be told to the world. We are very keen to tell the story.’ Then he looked at his secretary Rajesh Puri and both smiled. He finally agreed to talk to me. And that’s how our first meeting ended.

He felt that it was too early to make a film and kept saying no. Whenever he would not take my call for three-four days, I would land up at his Delhi office all the way from Hyderabad. He was always polite. So it didn’t feel like a rejection to me, and his stature is so huge that I didn’t mind going again and again to him. From a ‘strict no’ to ‘maybe not’ to it is ‘not only about me’ to ‘only if it is about the entire team coming together’ to ‘okay, fine’ — I visited Kapil Dev over 10 times in a year and it took him over 15 months to say okay.

Kapil sir said, ‘I want you guys to make sure that each player gets equal importance, and the film is not just about me.’ That’s when it hit me very hard that this story must be told. If we don’t tell this story to the world then it would be injustice to the game of cricket. Even after 38 years of winning the World Cup, the bond that he and his team share is beautiful. I think their trust and confidence in him, that he is always going to safeguard their interests - that’s what is binding them. He didn’t see the film in advance even though he got ample opportunities because he said ‘I want to watch our film with my team. I don’t want to watch it alone.’ He doesn’t want any privileges of being the captain.

I wanted to tell this story because cricket would not have been this big in our country if the 1983 victory would not have happened. I was confident that the story of the 1983 victory has to be told and I was persistent that I would make it happen. If not me, then someone else would have told this story. I was extremely keen to produce 83. I thought that if I could bring so many stars, so many team owners and so many industries together for the CCL (Celebrity Cricket League, of which he is the founder) then I could do this as well. That gave me the confidence that I could pull it off.

I contacted Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan after his film Lahore won the National Film Award (for Best Debut Film in 2010) and he was also convinced that this is a great story. I am working on a couple of projects with him, and he is an amazing writer. He gave life to my dream with the film’s first draft. And then Kabir Khan (the director) took it forward and made it bigger.

I’m a shy person. I want my work to talk. And I’m very, very happy that many people collaborated with me, had confidence in my idea and my dream came true. Everyone worked for my dream, my vision and that’s the happiest thing. This dream came true only because of Kabir and Ranveer.

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Recounting how the film’s journey started, Kapil Dev says, “Around five-seven years back Vishnu came to me with this idea of making the film and I said no. But he kept on coming for months. I think it took around two years. He spent a lot of time with me, and finally, I passed on this message to my team. Whatever we do, we do collectively as a team, so the team decided that yeah it is okay. Vishnu then picked Kabir Khan, who was very interested and then told the story to Ranveer and that’s how it happened. But all the credit goes to Vishnu for starting this when he came to meet me. We weren’t ready to talk to anybody for a film. But Vishnu became a friend and we started spending time, then the team and I started thinking about it.”