It had been raining cricket on TV for all of the last two months. On one side was the Indian Premier League, with all its glitz and glamour, and on the other, we had the non-stop promos of Azhar in which Emraan Hashmi tried very hard to imitate the batting style and mannerisms of the man on whose life the film was touted to be based on, Mohammed Azharuddin. So much so that in some promos, you saw Azharuddin teaching Hashmi how to hold a cricket bat. In every interview that Hashmi gave, Azharuddin sitting right next to him, promoting the film named after him.

As the IPL winds up, cricket lovers may find themselves looking up timings of Azhar (which is also on its last legs, as far as its run in cinemas is concerned). Pro tip: don’t.

So when I went to see the film, the huge disclaimer saying the film was fictional came as an equally huge surprise. I was apparently going to watch a kaalpanik chitra (imaginary film) which is based on vibhinna ghatnaon (many episodes) of the life of a disgraced captain of the Indian cricket team; that any resemblance to any real event is matra ek sanyog (a mere coincidence), and that it doesn’t intend to “hurt” any sanstha (organization) or ‘corporate’. Phew.

Why bother calling it ‘Azhar’ then? Why not ‘Sachin’ or ‘Ajay’ or ‘Manoj’ or ‘Ravi’, or after the names of ‘imaginary’ players of the Indian cricket team, who were compatriots of the cricketer who faced a lifetime ban after being found guilty of match fixing? And why was Azharuddin promoting the film if it was not based on its life?

Making a biopic is hard. Not only do you have to cram the events of a lifetime into a couple of hours (and add songs), there’s always the danger of being sued or stuck with a subject who is upset with the way you’ve depicted them. This happened with Gulaab Gang, for instance, which tried to fictionalize the life of Sampat Pal Devi (founder of Gulabi Gang) and Devi threatened to take the filmmaker and producer to court. Koose Muniswamy Veerappan is dead, so he can’t complain about how director Ram Gopal Verma has decided to show him in the film Veerappan. Usually, however, Bollywood tends to err on the side of caution. They make biopics that are flat and full of praise, and rope the subject into the publicity so that there’s no chance of a law suit. (Think Mary Kom.)

However, honesty has to be the bedrock of any biography and if it isn’t there, the audience feels cheated. If you pick a character as complex and dramatic as Azharuddin, then whitewashing him is to swindle the audience that’s coming to the theatre to relive an unforgettable slice of modern Indian pop culture and history. Belonging to a generation that lived through the match-fixing scandal, it was a downer to see how blandly and spinelessly it was portrayed on screen by writer Rajat Arora and director Tony D’Souza. D’Souza obviously chose to make Azhar because Azharuddin was such a controversial figure in his time. The issue of fixing-matches-for-money would have a deep-seated impact on the game, not just nationally but internationally. It was the first sign of how the sport had become not just popular, but also lucrative. It showed how cricket was transforming from a gentlemen’s game to an industry.

Azharuddin was brilliant cricketer, but he remains more memorable for the matches he fixed than the wristwork and fielding that made people gasp when he was in form. Sure, a court did overturn the ban, but it did not clear his name. The judgment was based on technicalities rather than on proof of innocence.

Any film made on his life had to address the issue of match-fixing, but watching Azhar, it’s obvious that this film was made to clear his name. As expensive ‘explanations’ go, making an entire film to ‘prove’ one’s innocence is right up there. But wait. Is Azhar really about Azharuddin? The most glaring and irritating thing about the film is that it doesn’t even have the courage to call its main protagonist Mohammed Azharuddin. He’s named “Azhar Mohammed” who just happens to be a Hyderabad lad, who totally coincidentally happens to leave his first wife for a Bollywood starlet, and accidentally deals with a bookie, which leads to his downfall. To quote the disclaimer at the start of the film, matra ek sanyog.

Making a film on Azharuddin was never going to be easy and it’s impossible if the filmmakers won’t be honest about what the cricketer did. Unfortunately for Azhar, the film and the filmmakers display a lack of courage when exploring one of the darkest chapters in Indian cricket history. The film could have been a great cautionary tale about a great sport at the threshold of becoming a behemoth — full of big money and glamour, bigger endorsements and never-ending temptations. Instead, it is an inept ‘tamasha’ that never scratches below the surface or even attempts to tell the truth.