Akshay apt to play Milkha Singh, says Amitabh Bachchan

Mumbai: Megastar Amitabh Bachchan has recommended the name of Akshay Kumar to filmmaker Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra to play legendary athlete Milkha Singh on screen.

Mehra is working on a bio-pic of the athlete and met Bachchan during the staging of the play `Bas Itna Sa Khwab Hai`, on Sunday. The megastar felt that Milkha Singh`s life and times made a terrific story. "It is a subject that carries immense potential to become a great film. There is history, patriotism, humanity, achievement against odds and a story of incredible pathos and poetic justice," Big B wrote on his blog. Bachchan said that Mehra was non-plussed about the casting. "He was non plussed, for they had not even started thinking of it, the task being mammoth. I looked at Akshay seated next to me in the theatre and told Rakeysh `take him`," he wrote. "As a young kid barely in his teens he saw his entire family hacked to death in front of his eyes during the rioting that took place on the Pakistan side. And all he could see and remember was his dying Father screaming to him .. " bhaag .. bhaag Milkha bhaag "( run..run Milkha run), to escape from being killed by the marauding rioters," Bachchan wrote. "The visuals of the dastardly act perpetually within him, his entire family killed before his very eyes, impoverished and alone he ran across to the Indian side of the imaginary border and became one of the greatest `runners` of the country!," wrote Bachchan. Apart from Bachchan and Mehra, Abhishek and Aishwarya, Akshay Kumar and Twinkle, Ashutosh Gowariker and his wife Sunita also came to Rang Sharda auditorium to watch the play. PTI