‘Nobody gave us a hope in hell’: 83, the feelgood film about India’s underdog cricket team

On Sunday night, one film did a clean sweep of the awards at this year’s Indian film festival of Melbourne: 83, an unconventional sports biopic and one of the best Bollywood crowd-pleasers in recent years. The comedy-drama won best film, best director for the renowned writer-director Kabir Khan and best actor for Ranveer Singh, who portrays Kapil Dev, the captain of India’s vastly underestimated and underfunded 1983 Cricket World Cup team who famously claimed victory against returning two-time champions the West Indies.

Khan was 15 when the final was played at Lord’s cricket ground in London, but he couldn’t grasp the magnitude at the time. “More than the match itself, I remember very distinctly thinking that day: why the hell has everyone gone mad?” he says. “Why are the grownup relatives of my family crying? Why are people dancing?”

It wasn’t until he learned about the widespread pessimism surrounding India’s chances – including from the Indian players themselves, seven of whom had already booked holidays to the US thinking they wouldn’t get past the group stages – that he began shaping his screenplay.

“People sometimes ask me: ‘Would you want to do 2011?’” Khan said, referring to India’s second World Cup win in Mumbai. “And I’ve often said that 2011 is not really a story. In 2011 we were the favourites. We were playing at home, we had lots of superstars in our team, and we went ahead and won. It’s 1983 which is a story, because nobody in the world gave us a hope in hell.”

Another significant difference between the two victories is that the 2011 World Cup was widely watched in its entirety, but only the 1983 final and semi-final were aired live in India (a decision that is dramatised in 83). Furthermore, India’s second