MUMBAI: World Cupp 2011, a movie based on match-fixing in cricket and starring two former cricketers Saba Karim and Nikhil Chopra, is being released on 18 December with 500 prints.
Producer-director Ravi Kapoor who also plays the central role told indiantelevision.com that he had taken actual situations and given the real names of 15 bookies and members of the underworld in Mumbai.
As a result, he had received a threatening call from gangster Ravi Pujari who has accused him of working at the behest of Chhota Rajan. The charge is that Kapoor has shown Pujari’s wife Padma as part of the betting.
Similarly, he had used the name Shobhan for the main bookie, knowing fully well that there is a match-fixer of that name operating in Mumbai. Karim and Chopra are playing themselves in the film.
Kapoor said his film will trace the genesis of match-fixing as a cornered underworld finds a new source of revenue after their weekly income from dance bars stopped when these were banned.
He said that he had not spared parties like the Shiv Sena which had made a lot of hue and cry about cheerleaders, but said nothing about match-fixing.
Asked about the title, he said he had been advised by a numerologist to spell Cup with a double ‘p’ for luck.
Asked what inspired him to make the film, he said that when India lost to Bangladesh in the 2007 World Cup, he was convinced that the standard of the ‘Men in Blue‘ could not have fallen so low after a defeat against Australia. He, therefore, suspected match-fixing to be the cause of this.
He said the research on the subject had taken him two years. He met a lot of bookies and also police personnel and sat with bookies when they were accepting betting.
He said he had noticed times when a team which was 100 for no loss was suddenly all out for 120. He said if the excuse was that the pitch was turning, why was it that it suddenly became placid when the other side came in to play.
Asked why he wanted to start his career with such a risky theme, he said "I wanted to start my career with a realistic subject."
