Four Hours Of Cricket A Day For 6 Months! Here's How Ranveer Singh Turned Into Kapil Dev For '83'

When Kabir Khan planned on making a film on one of India's greatest victories - the first World Cup win - he knew it was a huge challenge and responsibility. "I knew if I don't recreate this correctly, the country will not forgive me. Ditto for Ranveer Singh. If he won't portray Kapil Dev correctly, the audience will not forgive him," Khan told ETimes in an interview.

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Ranveer Singh was also the first choice for Khan. "Ranveer is a chameleon. See his last 4 films and you feel there's a different human being in each of them. I knew Ranveer would be the perfect choice. I told him it's not a look-alike contest, you need to imbibe Kapil's persona."

And Khan is right. We all agree after watching the trailer of 83.

(Also Read: Dancing To ¡®Nashe Si Chadh Gayi¡¯ & Singing ¡®Apna Time¡¯, Ranveer Singh Is Having A Ball With Team 83)

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Not only has he got into the skin of the character, but he has also aced his look. But how did he prep up for the role? Ranveer would play cricket for four hours every day for six months in order to get his cricketing skills on point.

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"He has a very unique bowling action and his bio-mechanics are very unique to him. My body is very different from his so I had to transform my physicality drastically in order to achieve it. It took a long time, in fact, months to perfect the action," he told ANI.

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"Initially, my body was too heavy because I was coming off of the shoot of Simmba. Our coach noticed that my body was too heavy and he said, Jab tu run-up mein aata hai toh tu aisa lagta hai ki pehelwan bowling karne aa raha hai.' And he sent me away for a month just to change my physicality to bring it closer to Kapil's athleticism and then once I did that, I started making some headway."

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It took a lot of hard work indeed. "I was playing cricket for 4 hours a day for 6 months and doing physical conditioning for 2 hours a day for those 6 months. Four months of prep and 2-3 months of shoot, I put in a lot of hours".

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During his transformation, Ranveer Singh also suffered injuries but that didn't stop him from practicing rigorously. Ranveer Singh would practice under the guidance of Balwinder Singh Sandhu and of course Kapil Dev would sometimes give his inputs too.

Meanwhile, 83's early reactions have come and people have declared the film a masterpiece already. The film got a standing ovation at the Red Sea Film Festival.

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