Murali to hit India’s film market with look-alike star

Muttiah Muralidaran-Vijay Sethupathi

A film on retired Sri Lanka cricketer Muttiah Muralidaran is to be made in India with popular Tamil actor Vijay Sethupathi playing the role of the legendary bowler who took 800 Test wickets and called it quits in 2012.

Muralidaran is presently in India as part of the coaching team for the Sun Risers Hyderabad in the Indian Premier League tournament.

The film is set to showcase Muralidaran’s entire cricketing career from his school days at St. Anthony’s College in Kandy upto the time he retired after taking the wicket of Indian batsman Ishant Sharma in a Test match in Galle in 2012.

“We only see the ball spinning out of his hand, but it actually comes out of his soul. Many know Muthiah Muralidaran the bowler, I want to portray the person behind the legend,” Vijay Sethupathi told Variety.

Muralidaran himself is elated at the thought of being portrayed in a Bollywood movie which is not the first to highlight a cricket-related story.

“When they came to me to make a movie out of my life, the only reason I said yes was because people only knew the one person who broke many records on the cricket field. But they should know Muttiah Muralidaran is not just the one person,” Muralidaran told Variety.

“What attracted me to the film was the fact that this was not yet another sports biopic,” producer Vivek Rangachari of DAR told Variety. “There are so many interesting facets to Murali’s life (other) than cricket that excited us towards the project.”

The film will be in the Tamil language but will also be dubbed in Sinhalese. According to a report, shooting of the film will start in early 2021 in India, Sri Lanka, England and Australia.