Mumbai: Actor Ranveer Singh, who will be seen playing legendary Indian cricket captain Kapil Dev in the upcoming sports drama ’83’, has talked about getting into the skin of the character.
Ranveer revealed that bowling like the star cricketer was the most difficult aspect of his character development.
Ranveer said: “Bowling like Kapil Dev was the most difficult aspect of the character development. He has a very unique bowling action and his bio-mechanics are very unique to him. My body is very different from his so I had to transform my physicality drastically in order to achieve it.
He added: “It took a long time, in fact months to perfect the action. Initially, my body was too heavy because I was coming off the shoot of ‘Simmba’.”
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The actor shared that Balwinder Singh Sandhu, the legend of the 1983 World Cup win who was also his coach noticed that his body was too heavy and he said “‘Jab tu run-up mein aata hai toh tu aisa lagta hai ki pehelwan bowling karne aa raha hai’.”
Ranveer added: “And he sent me away for a month just to change my physicality to bring it closer to Kapil’s athleticism and then once I did that, I started making some headway. I was playing cricket for 4 hours a day for 6 months and doing physical conditioning for 2 hours a day for those 6 months. Four months of prep and 2-3 months of shoot, I put in a lot of hours.”
Ranveer’s metamorphosis to become Kapil Dev pushed his body to its limit.
“There were a few injuries along the way but it was very important for me to crack his action because it is an iconic bowling action and all his admirers will be looking out for whether I did it right or not.”
Ranveer shared: “More importantly for him to feel that I got it right and for me to feel that I got it right and for it just spot on in the film and I had to put in the work but it was very fulfilling. At the end of the process, I have become a decent enough bowler also.”
He added: “Apart from Balwinder Singh Sandhu I had a lot of help from our coach Rajiv Mehra and there were several sessions that I did on the pitch with Kapil himself who had his inputs also to offer.”
’83’ highlights India winning the 1983 World Cup under the leadership of Kapil Dev, played by Ranveer.
The film is all set to release theatrically worldwide December 23.
