Big banner Yash Raj film’s much awaited Chak de India, a full 150 minute cinema, is a great entertainer. Not a moment is dull. The energetic superstar of Bollywood, who reportedly charge anywhere between 5-8 crore per film, seemed to have given his best shot as hockey player and then a successful coach. He enlivens the screen.

Shot in various locations in India as well as in Melbourne hockey grounds with real time Australian team players, the film is full of thrill and suspense, never allowing you to take the eyes away from the screen.

Unlike Bollywood masala, there are no duets, hero and heroines roaming around trees and park, but this is a reality based picture. There is just one song in the entire film. And, a film you can watch with entire family.

Though it is widely reported the film is based on the trauma and triumph of M.R. Negi, former goalkeeper, but the story is a careful mix of life and times of various heroes of hockey, both men and women, especially those who dominated the international hockey scene in the last two decades.

The story is about one Kabir Khan, who gets a penalty stroke against Pakistan in the World Cup final but fails to convert because of which he is abused by the public and had to even shift his home base out of humiliation. Seven years later he returns to hockey field to train women hockey team, as nobody else was ready to coach the team perceived to be the losers.

The plot thickens here. The initial portrayal is laced with humour. How girls from remote corners of India, very much varying in culture and language, present themselves, reach the venues and shy of mixing with each other and that sort of stuff. The sturdy punjab girls attract as much admiration as that of tiny haryana’s chautala. All of them appearing in ethnic saree for a function is very tastefully done, and the audience recognized it with applause.

The things that always matter in the team game like regional feeling, groupism, senior versus youngsters, captaincy issue, onfield rivalry between players, indiscipline, revolt against coach, misbehaviour with umpires, onfield communication problems that the Indian teams always face — and virtually everything is assimilated and treated in the story. Some sociological problems that confront the girls also come in for careful treatment.

To give reality to the entire things, former Indian hockey coaches like Zafar Iqbal, Rajinder Singh Sr., M.K. Kaushik (probably on Pakistan bench), a local boys men team appear briefly on screen. Rajinder Singh Sr. even delivers a few lines of dialogue.

The story gets serious when an administrator takes light of the women’s trip to World Cup, and instead wants to send a men’s team. How the team got his nod, and how after losing 1-6 to Australia the team reaches the final and how in the final a good chemistry between captain and the coach help overcome the tie-breaker.. .. make up the story. Its all great stuff, with clinical understanding of the sport of hockey. No one can find a technical fault the way the game has been portayed in the film.

In sum, this is the best thing that has happened to Indian hockey, especially the ladies who always deliver. Their sport is now in the publc domain and it is for good for the sport that need public support at this point of tiome.

The media hype surrounding the film is seen to be believed. Even hockey players like Ashok Kumar and Inam-ur-rahman going to a theatre in Bhopal has been covered in the television. Chat shows are galore.

Media people are chasing the present women team for a byte or quote. For me who passionately covered the women hockey for long, it feels great.

It is all the more sweet because the film hit the screen hours after an official communication confirmed award of Arjuna to Jyothi Sunita Kullu, easily the best stick artist to dazzle the turf in the last one decade.