Caught Out Crime. Corruption. Cricket is the latest Indian documentary premiered on Netflix on March 17, 2023. It exposes the biggest scandal surrounding the sport of cricket during the 1990s and marks the directorial debut of Supriya Sobti Gupta. With a runtime of 1hr 17 mins, it has been produced by Passion Pictures.
As the first Women’s Premier League is being played in Mumbai, this documentary film opens over a three-decade-old chapter in the history book of this sport that shook the entire nation. The biggest match-fixing scandal that brought this issue into the public eye shattered the hopes and morals associated with the sport nearly worshipped in India.
-Caught Out Review Contains Mild Spoilers-
Borrowing the accounts from some veteran journalists and cricketers who’ve seen the know-how of the entire affair back then, the documentary gradually breaks open each step of the scandal. As divulged on the cover of an old Outlook Magazine, the film once again turns the clock to probe into ‘India’s Worst Kept Secret’ that is still very much a concerning issue in the modern age despite the steps having been taken to curb similar possibilities.
As the movie goes on, it unpacks the uproarious love that the nation’s people have for this sport, which seems to light up a fire in their souls. However, this innate glee and enthusiasm associated with cricket again arise from our universal love for the underdog trope in movies. The film builds its identity with a familiar documentary style by tapping into that vintage aesthetic of video tapes and similar paraphernalia. It hints at the voiceovers of anonymous bookies involved in the mess and brings out faceless reenactments of the past to the front.
In doing so, it also brings down the curtain on those supposed protagonists of the sport by proving them to be flawed humans. Even after the movie has rolled out on the screen, the trajectory leaves us questioning whether they were responsible for all that. And even if the answers aren’t caught in the midst, these players are ‘Caught Out’, as they no longer appear to be the god-like heroes they once seemed.
Four player names are specially brought up as the case is meticulously unfolded again – Manoj Prabhakar, Kapil Dev, Mohammad Azharuddin and the South African champion Hansi Croje. While contemporary young fans of the sport may think this documentary’s title to be suggestive of the IPL debacle, it may all seem distant from their lived reality. However, once this old page is opened again, older audiences can testify how disturbing it was for all of them, and not something that could be shaken off after one’s usual scroll through Instagram or Twitter.
The journalists enlisted for this film’s documentation are the perfect batch to divulge this case to the public. While some are equally invested in cricket, others have found their fated professions in sports journalism by chance. Yet all of them do a great job of breaking down the flowchart of the hierarchy in this villainous dark shadow cast over the game.
Caught Out Crime Corruption Cricket: Final Thoughts
The title itself has multiple-tier plays on the term – one that goes along with its obvious connotation linked to cricket, the other shedding light on the players and the people caught in this version of unsporting gambling, and the last one referring to the set of people going undercover to break into the case along with the fear of being ‘caught out’.
What charmed me about this film is that it completely shatters the godlike stance accorded to celebrities – in this case, national players of a larger-than-life sport like cricket. Even if you’re a bigger fan of a different sport like me, this docu-film is something that you need to dig into this weekend. It builds up the tension without making you rack your brain for clues. How each anecdote has been strung together by the storytellers chosen for this task keeps you invested in the narrative. Sometimes, you can even see the excitement glistening on the journalist’s face.
As most documentaries and real-life investigative stories would have it, this leaves you with a lot to ponder with its open-ended insufficiency, again highlighting the greyness of human characters in reality. As opposed to a match churning out a winner or a loser, Caught Out proves that real life is a lot more nuanced than that to fit into a binary paradigm, and most of it’s disappointing and flawed regardless of how much we may raise it on to a pedestal. So, sometimes even ‘the gentleman’s game’ doesn’t involve the coming together of gentlemen in contrast to what we would hope for.
Caught Out: Crime Corruption Cricket is now streaming on Netflix.
Also read: Agent Elvis Review: Elvis Presley Stars in an Insane Show!