And that’s why the Celebrity Cricket League 2012 has been a success, feels Cineswami

India’s twin passions are cinema and cricket and not necessarily in that order. Therefore it might have seemed like a simple task to blend the two. The resulting films, with the notable exception of Ashutosh Gowariker’s Oscar-nominated Lagaan, starring the peerless Aamir Khan, and Venkat Prabhu’s joyous paean to galli cricket, Chennai 600028, have been colossal disappointments. Aamir himself tasted failure under the stewardship of the late, great Dev Anand in Awwal Number and there have been several other duds like Kabhi Ajnabi The, Meerabai Not Out, Hattrick and so on. All these happened when cricket was included in cinema. When the reverse occurred, that is when cinema came to cricket, the results were more positive. The Celebrity Cricket League comprising teams of film people from the Bollywood, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali film industries kicked off last year. Unlike their cinema, and like their IPL counterparts, the celebrity teams proved bereft of imagination when it came to naming their teams, thus saddling us with Karnataka Bulldozers, Kerala Strikers, Telugu Warriors, Chennai Rhinos, Mumbai Heroes and Bengal Tigers. Click here to read more