83

No wonder 83 felt to me like a certain way of life that we seem to be unable to hold on to now. A piece of nostalgia that made me face up to a steady sense of loss of basic human goodness and dignity.

A winning concoction of cricket, nostalgia and patriotism.

There are a lot of matches and players to cover, but Khan skates energetically through it all, sketching tactical shifts in creaseside exchanges between batsmen and deploying economic character riffs.

Ranveer Singh plays the captain's knock in this blood rush of a movie.

This sporting drama, based on actual events, is a film that you'll have seen many times before, just in different guises.

83 is the kind of film that undercuts its own drama with tone-deaf moments of humourits like a Marvel movie, but much worse.

In recreating the magic and mood of the year that Indian cricket team won its maiden World Cup, the film-maker not only brings back yesteryear legends to the fore but also reiterates the soothing power of nostalgia.

But the screenplay, by Kabir Khan (who also directs), Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan and Vasan Bala, doesn't explain how the lowly longshots managed to turn things around: hard work, strategy, luck, kismet or all of the above.

It's the kind of film that, contrary to the team it highlights, remains happy to win hearts and not trophies.

The 1983 victory was like no other, particularly because of how impossible it seemed at the time. 83 is a competently made ode to the game of cricket and the team that made all Indians feel like champions.