MUMBAI: Actor Saqib Saleem is celebrating 3 years of his sports biopic ‘83’. The actor took to his Instagram on Tuesday, and shared BTS moments from the film.
He wrote in the caption, “Made so many memories on this one. Some lifelong friendships, some unforgettable times, not tagging anyone cos everyone from this team is tagged in my heart. 3 years to ‘83’”.
‘83’, which was helmed by Kabir Khan, told the story behind India’s World Cup winning squad of 1983. The Indian cricket team, spearheaded by Kapil Dev, squared off against the mighty West Indies in the 1983 World Cup Finals. Interestingly, Neena Gupta, who also stars in the film, dated Viv Richards, the cricketing legend, who was part of the 1983 West Indies squad under the captaincy of Sir Clive Hubert Lloyd.
Sir Richards used to bat at number three and also a Right-arm medium/off break bowler. In the finals, he scored 33 runs from 28 balls with a strike rate of 117.85 before he was caught by Kapil Dev on Madan Lal’s delivery.
However, he proved expensive with the ball as he conceded 8 runs in the only over that he bowled. Neena and Richards started dating in the late 80s and have a daughter, Masaba Gupta, who is one of India’s leading courtiers and an actor having made her debut with the Netflix original, ‘Masaba Masaba’.
The film was originally scheduled to release in cinemas in April 2020, but was pushed from its release date several times due to the casting and pre-production works that delayed filming, and also due to the Covid-19 pandemic in India, resulting in the film being delayed until December 2021.
It premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival on 15 December and released worldwide on 24 December 2021 in conventional 2D and 3D formats, distributed by PVR Pictures in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam languages, apart from the original version. However, the film was unsuccessful at the box office.