Gold: How Akshay Kumar's Hockey Drama Changed The Way Indian Team Won in 1948 Olympics and in Turn, History Itself!

If you are not aware of this, Gold is actually based on Indian hockey team's scintillating win of the gold medal in the Summer Olympics of 1948. It is a golden chapter of Indian sports and the first major victory for India as a free country. The story is worth narrating to the generations about how our country stole victory from its former oppressors in the latter's land just a year after its independence. Therefore, Gold should have been an awesome opportunity to recreate this great moment. Except that it is not. For the Reema Kagti-directed film would rather have spent time with a fictional creation they made for the movie - Akshay Kumar's Tapan Das.

I have no clue why the makers would go for this route. Weren't the real-life heroics of the 1948 hockey team worth enough to be made as a movie? Or do we really need to bank on Akshay Kumar's brand of nationalism to invoke a sense of patriotism in us? What hurts here is that Gold borrows all the struggles that the Indian team had gone through in that period - winning the gold medal in the 1936 Olympics from Hitler's team, the red-tapism involved in rebuilding the new team, partition splitting up them and the difficulties in getting a good coaching facility. The characters that Kunal Kapoor, Sunny Kaushal, Vineet Kumar Singh, Amit Sadh are all based on real-life players. Only they are now adopting fictional names and personas. In case you have not noticed it, Kunal Kapoor's Samrat is based on the late Dhyanchand, India's greatest hockey legend.

Now let's talk about the 1948 Olympics. The newly formed India and Pakistan field hockey teams were seen as the dark horses in the tournament. The movie shows their progression as it is. India and Pakistan did reach the semi-finals where they competed against Netherlands and England respectively. Pakistan got defeated in this league, while India depended on the luck factor to get them into the finals. And then here things changed a lot!

For one, the England field hockey team was considered weaker than both Indian and Pakistan. In the past competitions, their team was made of players of India and Pakistan origin. But now they had running short of real players from their own country and had made their team borrowing sportspersons from other sports, including cricket.

So when they faced India in the finals, they were still the weaker team of the two and therefore it was easier for us to beat them! It was a comprehensive victory, 4-0, to India. But a one-sided match hardly makes an interesting finale match (see Soorma for that!). So here's where Kagti changed things - the British looked like the stronger team and even scores two goals. The two Indian players (Amit Sadh's Raghubir and Sunny Kaushal's Hemant) solved their Konal Chauthala-Preeti Sabharwal rivalry and then scored more goals in the second half, making it a 4-2 win. Just like how Dangal changed the final match of Geeta Phogat in the climax.

We are curious to know if Bollywood film-makers would attempt to do the same if the movie was based on cricket. Will Ranveer Singh and director Kabir Khan changed how the final match of the 1983 Cricket World Cup just to add more thrills? Sure, there was a disclaimer at the start of Gold that it is a fictional narrative. Every biopic is not exactly true to life, but cosmetic changes don't justify changing history. Glorifying a fictional character (and in turn, emphasise the 'Indianness' of its Canada-based lead actor), while relegating the real-life victories of real heroes to the background, is now how a true sports film is to be made. But then, if money-spinning ventures are what on your mind, then there is no better example that Gold for sure!

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 15, 2018 05:30 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).