4 min readUpdated: Jul 16, 2022 02:42 PM IST
Women in sport. Sporty women. It doesn’t matter how progressive the nation is, but young women who choose to dedicate their lives to sporting excellence have their struggle cut out, whether it is family or the world outside, inimical to female drive and ambition. Mithali Durai Raj, the captain of the Indian women’s cricket team, not only carved out a shining, inspirational career for herself, but was responsible for raising the bar for Indian women’s cricket.
That’s the stated intention of bio-pic ‘Shabaash Mithu’, headlined by Taapsee Pannu, and helmed by Srijit Mukerji. The film begins with a winsome childhood portion, in which two little girls, hothead Noorie (Jagnam) and graceful, doe-eyed Mithali (Varma), find common cause thwacking a ball around with a makeshift bat. The footwork in Mithu’s Bharatnatyam class comes in handy, as she learns the first rule of batting: guard your wicket, never get out.
This steely resolve, awakened in those early, carefree years comes in handy when Mithali sets out on her journey from that little garden patch in Hyderabad, and which culminates in the hallowed grounds of Lords, as they battle England in the World Cup final in 2016. In between are the road bumps and the somewhat smooth patches — grandmother and brother in a huff balanced by supportive parents (Dharmadhikari and Sukumaran), fiercely committed coach (Vijay Raaz), jealous team-mates, indifferent officials, sexist overall atmosphere. It is a fitting finale for the Women In Blue, who lose the final but win our hearts.
When the beats are so predictable, how do you build in surprise? The challenges of pulling off a consistently engaging film, based on a sporting figure of such recent years whose every achievement is a matter of record, are there for everyone to see. The overhang of ‘Chak De’ is strongly imprinted in a few sequences, especially in the one in which Mithali-the-captain lines up her team for an ‘introduction’ with the dismissive officials of the premiere cricketing body in India, carefully not termed the BCCI in the film. The scenes in which the enmity between a senior player and the rookie are played out also feel far too familiar, as well as those in which she is made fun of. And while there is some amount of cricketing action in the fields in and out of the country, nothing is really goose-bump inducing, edge-of-the-seat stuff.
The film is long, and flabby in parts. A couple of team-mates get some scenes on their own, especially the one played by the very expressive Sapna Mandal: Raaz is the only other performer who stands out. The background music keeps swelling, trying to tell us how to feel. When will this stop? The film does a fair job of outlining the sad state of women’s cricket– the bare-bones sleeping arrangements in the training camps, the sink-or-swim attitude of the officials in charge of the team, the worshipping of the boys in blue, and the shameful neglect of the women. But Mukerji’s direction is so on-the-nose that there’s no space for nuance: everything is underlined. The songs are superfluous. What keeps this film together is a solid performance by Pannu, who gets into the skin of her character with minimum fuss, keeping the flourishes for the field. She is much better than the film.
Shabaash Mithu movie cast: Taapsee Pannu, Vijay Raaz, Inayat Varma, Kasturi Jagnam, Mumtaz Sorcar, Sapna Mandal, Devadarsini Sukumaran, Sameer Dharmadhikari, Brijendra Kala
Shabaash Mithu movie director: Srijit Mukerji
Shabaash Mithu movie rating: 2.5 stars
Shabaash Mithu movie review: Taapsee Pannu-starrer is a biopic on Mithali Raj, the captain of the Indian women’s cricket team.