How Rajkummar Rao's Sourav Ganguly biopic led to Leicestershire cricket club facing relegation in County Championship

Sourav Ganguly's biopic Dada, starring Rajkummar Rao, was being filmed at real cricket grounds in England in August.

Extreme heat, unusual weather, and a Bollywood film: These factors combined to make life difficult for England's Leicestershire cricket club, which is now facing relegation from the County Championship's Division One after it was docked 27 points for the poor state of its playing surface.

Leicestershire facing relegation

Rajkummar Rao will play the lead role in Dada: The Sourav Ganguly Story,

Earlier this week, Leicestershire, one of England's premier cricket clubs, were docked 27 points from its ongoing County Championship campaign. This happened due to the controversy around their August fixture against Glamorgan. Leicestershire beat Glamorgan on August 20, but the match referee reported 43 instances of uneven bounce caused by cracks in the ground. ECB's regulator later ruled that the pitch at Grace Road, Leicestershire's home ground, was below standard and withdrew the 19 points from the victory over Glamorgan, in addition to an eight-point penalty.

This means Leicestershire have now dropped to the bottom of the 10-team league with just 89 points, a full 38 points below Glamorgan in 8th. The bottom two teams at the end of the season will be relegated to Division Two. The club has until September 29 to appeal, and four games left to play before the end of the season.

How a Bollywood film comes into play

Leicestershire's head groundsman, Callum Lewin, blamed the shoot for being one of the reasons why the pitch was unplayable. He argued that because of that, he could not work on the pitch properly. In his statement to the England and Wales Cricket Board's regulator, the groundsman said, “There was a lot of circumstances leading up to the game that were just out of my control, such as the weather was 35 degrees (Celsius, 95 Fahrenheit) and we had an unscheduled Bollywood filming event four days before. I wasn’t allowed to work on the pitch. I wasn’t allowed to cover it or anything.”

Lewin said that because of that, the moisture readings were below expected, despite heavy watering to compensate for eight continuous hours of exposure to a blazing sun. However, the ECB regulator did not view this as a valid excuse. “Risk management should have envisaged the need to incorporate protection of the pitch during the Bollywood event,” the regulator wrote.

All about the Sourav Ganguly biopic

Dada - The Sourav Ganguly Story is directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, produced by Luv Ranjan and Ankur Garg under Luv Films and is presented by Gulshan Kumar, Bhushan Kumar, T-Series and DBL. According to the makers, the biographical sports drama will revolve around Ganguly's journey from a young cricketer to one of India's most successful captains.

An elegant attacking batter, Ganguly scored more than 18,000 runs across formats. He is regarded as one of India's greatest white-ball batters and an inspirational captain. The film on his life will hit the screens on May 14, 2027.