Sports
Narendra Modi is Gujarat Cricket Association president
MUMBAI: Narendra Modi was formally elected as the new Gujarat Cricket Association president.
The Gujarat chief minister has thus ended the 16-year rule of Congress and former deputy CM Narhari Amin‘s dominance of cricket administration in the state.
The Gujarat CM joins politicians who have ventured into crickey like ICC VP Sharad Pawar
BJP‘s Arun Jaitley heads Delhi cricket and the party’s MP Anurag Thakur is in charge in Himachal.
The Congress‘s Jyotiraditya Scindia heads the Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association while party MP Rajiv Shukla is BCCI VP.
Sports
Diamond Raja gets the Sunrisers dancing in Netflix’s latest IPL campaign film
Sunil Grover’s beloved character pulls the Hyderabad squad into an alternate universe in the newest instalment of Netflix’s Chill Like a Champion series
Mumbai: The final over is done, the bats are racked and the Sunrisers Hyderabad dressing room is ready for its real entertainment to begin. Netflix, the official entertainment partner of the Sunrisers, has dropped the latest film in its Chill Like a Champion campaign, and it is loud, daft and very deliberate fun.
The film opens with the squad unwinding after a long day on the field by tuning into Netflix, where they stumble into Diamond Raja, Sunil Grover’s scene-stealing avatar from The Great Indian Kapil Show. One moment they are slumped on sofas; the next, they have been pulled bodily into Diamond Raja’s world, all high-energy choreography, theatrical excess and a custom, lyrically reworked version of his signature song, Slowly Slowly. The rewrite doubles as a tongue-in-cheek nudge to slow down, switch off and enjoy the moment. Cricketers Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head are all swept along for the ride.
The film is stuffed with winks at fan-favourite Netflix titles, including Pushpa and the K-drama When Life Gives You Tangerines, threading cricket’s biggest downtime into the streamer’s broader content universe.
Grover, for his part, seems to have relished every second of it. “Netflix has certainly surprising ways to inspire and excite you as an artist,” he said. “This collaboration brought together the best of two worlds, cricket and entertainment. Coming together with the stellar cricketers Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head was such a delightful experience. Getting to bring Diamond Raja into this mix was an interesting way to make this even more special. It is playful, happy, it is dramatic, and it shows how entertainment can completely pull you into another world. Just like what Netflix does.”
The Chill Like a Champion campaign spans several films, each catching cricket’s biggest names in their post-match, unheroic best, hooked to a screen and very much off the clock. The Sunrisers film is the latest addition to the series.
Netflix describes itself as one of the world’s leading entertainment services, offering TV series, films, games and live programming across genres and languages, available anytime, anywhere.
Diamond Raja is back, the Sunrisers are dancing and, if Netflix has its way, so is the rest of India.
