Tendulkar makes time for a special date with Bollywood

Mumbai: After scoring his 49th Test century last week Sachin Tendulkar made a call to his buddy filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra with a request. The cricketer and his wife wanted to watch the highly-acclaimed working-class comedy ‘Do Dooni Chaar’, which brought the Rishi Kapoor-Neetu Singh pair together again after 30 years.

Sachin didn`t know the film`s makers and so asked Chopra, with whom he has lately been in touch, about watching ‘Do Dooni Chaar’. As luck would have it, Chopra himself loved this little film about a mathematics professor in Delhi trying to buy a car for his family, and immediately got in touch with the film`s team. Sachin, his wife and their close friends watched ‘Do Dooni Chaar’ at the KetNav dubbing studio in Bandra recently. Sachin was overwhelmed. Film`s director Habib Faizal said, "Sachin did express a wish to relax with my film after his triumph last week. Vidhu Vinod Chopra is a good friend of Tendulkar`s. And luckily for us, Vinod too loved `Do Dooni Chaar`." "Sachin Tendulkar seemed to really connect with the film. It could be because Sachin has himself come up the hard way. And though today he is a super-icon, he knows the middle-class milieu of my film. I think he remains a man rooted to basics." A Marathi by birth, Sachin seemed to enjoy the Punjabi milieu and jokes in ‘Do Dooni Chaar’. "After the match at Bangalore where Sachin scored his 49th Test century, he expressed a wish to relax by watching `Do Dooni Chaar`. I think he`s a fan of Rishi Kapoor and Neetuji. Unfortunately, they couldn`t attend the screening at KetNav," Habib said. Though cricket and Bollywood are never far apart, cricket`s biggest icon Sachin Tendulkar, a self-confessed movie buff, hardly gets time to watch movies, let alone act in one. Recently, he turned down Vidhu Vinod Chopra`s offer for ‘Ferarri Ki Sawari’. But after watching ‘Do Dooni Chaar’, he has expressed a desire to work with Habib Faizal. IANS