Defined | Who’s Pravin Tambe, the topic of Hotstar’s new cricket biopic?

The story thus far: The OTT platform Disney+ Hotstar launched on Friday, April 1, ‘Kaun Pravin Tambe?’, the Shreyas Talpade-starrer cricket biopic of 50-year-old Indian cricketer Pravin Tambe. The movie directed by Jayprad Desai, additionally stars Anjali Patil, Parambrata Chatterjee and Ashish Vidyarthi. 

Who’s Pravin Tambe?

An Indian legspinner and all-rounder who performed tennis-ball cricket and membership cricket in Mumbai for 20 years with out attending to play a single high-level match, Pravin Tambe sprung up within the mainstream on the age of 41, when he was chosen by the Rajasthan Royals to play within the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Born in 1971, the cricketer began taking part in gully cricket on the age of 15 within the Mulund suburb of Mumbai. Tambe dipped his toes within the metropolis’s membership cricket scene as a medium-paced bowler within the 1995-96 season of a home league of Mumbai’s D division, taking part in for the Parsee Cyclists Sports activities Membership, in response to cricket information website ESPN Cricinfo. He then went on to play within the B Division for the Parsee Gymkhana and finally, performed within the A Division’s prime league for the celebrated Shivaji Park Gymkhana, which has churned out many a first-class participant for Indian cricket, together with Shreyas Iyer, Ajit Wadekar, Vijay Manjrekar and the brothers Baloo and Subhash Gupte.

Tambe’s destiny, nevertheless, was not slated like different Shivaji Park Gymkhana greats, as he by no means received an opportunity to play a first-class match for 20 years from his first membership cricket stint.

Tambe’s father, Vijay Tambe, additionally performed suburban cricket in his early years. The cricketer received married in 1999 to Vaishali, now his spouse of 23 years. He spent virtually the subsequent decade-and-a-half working odd jobs which supplied cricket quotas.

He juggled jobs to make ends meet whereas persevering with coaching and participating within the maidan or floor cricket tournaments organised by the Mumbai Cricket Affiliation, such because the suburban cricket league referred to as the Thosar Defend Cricket, and the company cricket league often called Occasions Defend Cricket, the place groups of corporations compete in opposition to one another from 4 cricket divisions.

He first took half within the Occasions Defend league whereas working for a transport firm referred to as Orient Transport. It was right here that he started to make the shift from medium-paced bowling to wrist-spinning, after being requested by his workforce’s captain at Orient to bowl a leg-spin throughout an important match. It was additionally throughout his time right here that he met India and Mumbai’s fast-paced bowler Abey Kuruvilla, who later grew to become the sports activities director at Navi Mumbai’s DY Patil Sports activities Academy and a selector on the Board of Management for Cricket in India (BCCI).

After taking part in within the Occasions Defend for a few years, Tambe met with a roadblock when Orient Transport closed down its cricketing unit owing to budgetary constraints. He resorted to gully cricket matches and native tournaments once more, till securing a job on the DY Patil Sports activities Academy by way of Kuruvilla’s reference, as a development supervisor. The academy allowed him to signify its B workforce and he went on safe them loads of wins. He was additionally the Liaison Officer for the preliminary 5 years of IPL, when matches have been performed on the DY Patil Stadium.

All by way of these years, nevertheless, Tambe stored making an attempt to realize one factor — taking part in for Mumbai’s Ranji Cricket workforce. He tried his luck at a number of consecutive choice periods and was even named within the Ranji Probables between 2000 and 2002. Within the late 2000s, he stored getting rejected owing to his age.

In early 2013, whereas serving because the captain and coach of D Y Patil’s workforce, he received an Eleventh-hour likelihood to play for its A workforce in an invitational T20 match, changing a participant who received injured. It was this chance that grew to become the tipping level of his profession.

Little did the cricketer know that the scouts of the Rajasthan Royals have been taking discover of him through the invitational T20 match. Rahul Dravid and others from the Royals’ teaching tank had additionally seen Tambe when he would frequent their internet follow periods on the DY Patil Stadium.

Some months later, Dravid referred to as Kuruvilla asking him to ship Tambe to Jaipur to participate within the Rajasthan Royals choice trials. His choice would have Dravid going through raised eyebrows from workforce members and the workforce’s CEO on the time. Tambe, nevertheless, managed to make his debut within the IPL in 2013 as the primary participant to make his entry into the league on the age of 41. He additionally grew to become one of many few gamers to make their T20 debut with out having performed skilled first-class cricket matches.

Throughout a 2014 speech on the Design for Change Convention, Rahul Dravid spoke about Tambe as a cricketer who evokes him and “signifies ardour” within the recreation of Indian Cricket.

What are his profession highlights? 

Whereas he didn’t play many matches in IPL 2013, he created a spark the identical yr by receiving the Golden Wicket Award on the Champions League T20 for selecting up the best variety of wickets that season. This was additionally the yr that marked the realisation of the cricketer’s Ranji Dream, when he received to signify Mumbai in two top quality matches.

Throughout IPL 2014, his pot of wickets was simmering slowly till Could 5 that yr, when he made historical past in a match in opposition to the Kolkata Knight Riders by taking a 2-ball hat-trick off a large ball and two authorized deliveries, dismissing Manish Pandey, Yusuf Pathan and Ryan ten Doeschate. Tambe additionally bagged Man of the Match Awards and held the Purple Cap (for selecting up most wickets) until the twenty fifth match of that season. He additionally picked up the wicket of Indian cricket legend and former Chennai Tremendous Kings Captain M.S. Dhoni.

He performed for the Royals for 2 years to then be chosen by Gujarat Lions in 2016, however he couldn’t play due to the workforce’s subsequent suspension of two years. In 2017, he was picked up by and performed for the Sunrisers Hyderabad.

In 2018, he introduced his resignation from Indian cricket with a view to participate within the T10 league Abu Dhabi, because the BCCI doesn’t enable an Indian participant to take part in international leagues. In that format as properly, he set a file by taking 5 wickets for the Sindhs workforce in a single recreation, by dismissing Chris Gayle, Eoin Morgan, Kieron Pollard, Fabian Allen and Upul Tharanga in a match in opposition to Kerala Knights.

He withdrew his retirement when he was chosen by the Kolkata Knight Riders within the 2019 public sale to play in IPL 2020. Nonetheless, he was disqualified due to the above talked about BCCI rule, for enjoying within the Abu Dhabi T10 league a yr earlier.

In 2020, on the age of 48, Tambe retired once more and have become the first Indian participant to play within the Caribbean Premier League, the place he represented KKR’s sister franchise, the Trinbago Knight Riders.

He presently works as a KKR help employees and the workforce screened his Hotstar biopic for the complete squad on April 1.

The film ‘Kaun Pravin Tambe?’ 

Actor Shreyas Talpade, who has beforehand portrayed a younger cricketer within the 2005 movie Iqbal, performs Tambe in ‘Kaun Pravin Tambe?’. His spouse Vaishali is performed by Newton actor Anjali Patil, whereas Ashish Vidyarthi performs the character of his coach. The movie, although tailored from real-life occasions, has fictionalised parts such because the character of a journalist perennially dismissive of Tambe, performed by Kahaani actor Parambrata Chatterjee.

As a substitute of depicting the years of Tambe’s mainstream cricket glory, the movie focuses on his journey of 20 years taking part in native cricket, as he juggled household life and unrelenting disappointment in fulfilling his dream.