Beating the newshounds to India's ultimate Bollywood bite

Beating the newshounds to India's ultimate Bollywood bite

How the Guardian bagged an exclusive interview with Bollywood stars and the Indian Premier League's most glamorous owners Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta
Paul KelsoFebruary 21, 2008 4:18 PM
There are many reasons why the Indian Premier League will be a domestic success, but chief among them is the collision of cricket and Bollywood, the two pursuits that obsess the nation - and its voracious mass media - like no other.

On rolling news channels the exploits of opening batsmen and actors scroll endlessly across the screen, no matter apparently too trivial to be reported. When Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, perhaps India's best-loved actor, announced this week that he was thinking about stopping smoking (again) it made news bulletins.

India's one-day captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, meanwhile, surfed a familiar wave, lambasted on Monday for blowing a chance to beat Australia, only to be lionised a day later for seeing his side home against Sri Lanka. (On Wednesday he heard he will receive $1.5m for his services in the IPL, making it on balance a tolerable week.)

Much as in the UK, this celebrity obsession is fuelled by an endless appetite for news and a wonderfully competitive journalistic culture. India is one of the few countries on earth where newspaper circulation is growing, while TV stations, websites and radio all pursue stories with manic enthusiasm.

The three driving forces of Indian popular culture collided this week at the IPL player auction in Mumbai, an event attended by players, billionaire franchise owners, Bollywood A-listers and more than 200 domestic journalists, all desperate for "bites", a compression of soundbite that neatly captures the voracious appetite for content.

Top of the hit-list for the hacks and TV crews were Khan and actress Preity Zinta, who are both fronting franchises in the new cricket league. Khan has been criticised by Indian cricket officials in the past for only attending matches when he has a new movie to promote. Now, as the owner of the Kolkata team he's integral to their chances of establishing the popularity of their start-up league.

Zinta is the face of the Mohali franchise, bought by her partner Ness Wadia. One of India's first couples, they too are working hard to persuade the teenagers that fill the nation's cinemas for her movies to give Twenty20 cricket a try.

Anytime either she, 'SRK' or former India captain Sourav Ganguly moved inside the Hilton Towers on Wednesday, a pack of more than 30 newshounds armed with hand-held video cameras twitched in anticipation. When Ganguly left to catch his flight home to Kolkata he was swamped by a many-legged scrum of cameras and microphones, and early-evening news bulletins carried his stroll across the lobby live.

Zinta and Khan were an even more prized catch. Remarkably, and more through luck than judgement, the Guardian became the only news outlet in attendance to get privileged access.

This unlikely exclusive owed everything to the good auspices of Lalat Modi, the commissioner of the IPL whose dynamism and commercial acumen has driven the league from a standing start to sporting phenomenon in less than a year. Having been pestered for 48 hours by the only British-based reporter in attendance, Modi made good on his promise of an interview, inviting the Guardian to join him and his celebrity owners for a drink at the end of the nine-hour auction.

With the slavering press pack blocking all obvious exits from the Hilton's basement conference room and only restrained by the linked arms of security men, we took the time-honoured superstar route out via the kitchens. Chefs, kitchen porters and waiters gaped at the celebrity procession as it passed by, emerging among startled and unsuspecting diners enjoying one of the hotel's swankier restaurants. Paparazzi and reporters neatly evaded, we were swept into a private bar for an exclusive audience.

As scoops go it was perhaps wasted on a reporter who owed the sum total of his knowledge of India's answer to Cruise and Kidman to half an hour on Wikipedia. A lack of intimacy with the lives of two stars whose every move is familiar to millions of Indians proved not to be a major drawback, however. Actors being actors, wherever they are from, a suitable sycophantic line of questioning soon had them talking.

Zinta's interest in cricket runs less deep than that of her mentor Khan, and she admitted to not being familiar with some of the players purchased by her Mohali franchise in the auction. "There were times when I had to ask whether we had a good one," she admitted. (For the record Brett Lee, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene were among her purchases.)

She may not be a student of the game but she knows an enormous amount about the value of marketing, and her ability to draw a crowd will be priceless in the selling of the tournament. She demonstrated as much on a brief visit to the press room midway through the auction, when she ignored the near riot among photographers caught momentarily off guard by her appearance to pose for publicity-boosting shots.

Khan on the other hand is a thoughtful observer of both the game and its place in India's rapidly changing society. In between cigarettes - that story will run and run it seems - he offered an erudite analysis of the IPL's rise.

"This is an incredible opportunity," he said. "The economics of this country has changed. India is no longer on the threshold, it has walked through the door. One of the corollaries of that is that by 2010 we will have the youngest population of any country in the world, which is a huge demographic shift.

"This has me believing that as a country progresses the first thing you get over is food, clothing and housing. Then comes entertainment, and India is at that stage now. As entertainers, we have a chance to take it forward.

"I am involved in the IPL because I have been a sportsman all my life. I believe that if I had not been injured I might have made a profession from it, but there are Indian families who wonder if it is possible to make a proper living from sport. There has been a lack of professionalism in Indian sport, but with this project we have the chance to change that."