It is at its heart the story of innocence lost — the innocence of Azhar, the innocence of unnumbered fans who invested in his magic, the innocence of a sport that had shed its shady origins and reinvented itself as ‘the gentleman’s game’. And it is this that makes the story of Azhar a natural for a biopic.

What we get, instead, is a fanpic — a bland, badly-set soufflé of Bollywood tropes without a soul.