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NEW
DELHI: In the euphoria over India's T20 cricket triumph, there
is one song that has captured the spirit of that triumph.
It is Chak De! India's title song, which has climbed to the
top position this week, toppling Heyy Babyy.
Chak De! has become a phenomenon. Bengali news channel
Star Anando did a special feature that showed how the film
and especially the song, has had a positive rub on that first
touched hockey, a dying sport, despite its historic success
earlier and its continued status as India's national game.
Indian
hockey suddenly revived, and the two - the game and the song
became kin, to be followed immediately by the Indian football
team getting into the revival mode with a stunning victory
at the Nationals earlier this year.
The
song was played there too as celebrations for the Indian team.
Came
the cricket T20, and it was just Chak De! all the way
in Durban and Johannesburg, with the song blaring not only
from the PA systems, but the entire crowd - a large number
of them South Africans of Indian origin who never spoke Hindi
- singing the song almost as an anthem.
Yashraj
Films officials refused to give any figure of sales or even
percentage growth of sales volumes (number of copies sold),
stating that this was against company policy.
However,
they did say that the film has become just phenomenally big
and that they are deluged daily with feedback from institutions
and organisations across the world, asserting how the song
and the film have become synonymous with the revival of Indian
sport.
They
added as well that this is perhaps the first time that sports
magazines are writing about just one song in their own context.
Senior
sports writer and analyst Gulu Ezekiel told indiantelevision.com:
"My problem is I have not been able to watch the film,
but it is possibly becoming the rallying point for a sports
revival."
Ezekiel
added: "Honestly, I cannot vouch for it, but there could
be something in the song or the film that within a few weeks
after its release we won the Asian Hockey, then the Nehru
Cup and now the T20 World Cup."
He
held that even if there is a one per cent impact on team building
with a national spirit, that is good, and said that this kind
of song-sport impact has been seen in some instances in the
past in the West.
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