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News |  01 Oct 2007 23:13 |  By RnMTeam

Chak De! song gets global response as reviver of Indian sport

NEW DELHI: In the euphoria over India`s T20 cricket triumph, there is one song that has captured the spirit of that triumph. It is Chak De! India`s title song, which has climbed to the top position this week, toppling Heyy Babyy.

Chak De! has become a phenomenon. Bengali news channel Star Anando did a special feature that showed how the film and especially the song, has had a positive rub on that first touched hockey, a dying sport, despite its historic success earlier and its continued status as India`s national game.

Indian hockey suddenly revived, and the two - the game and the song became kin, to be followed immediately by the Indian football team getting into the revival mode with a stunning victory at the Nationals earlier this year.

The song was played there too as celebrations for the Indian team.

Came the cricket T20, and it was just Chak De! all the way in Durban and Johannesburg, with the song blaring not only from the PA systems, but the entire crowd - a large number of them South Africans of Indian origin who never spoke Hindi - singing the song almost as an anthem.

Yashraj Films officials refused to give any figure of sales or even percentage growth of sales volumes (number of copies sold), stating that this was against company policy.

However, they did say that the film has become just phenomenally big and that they are deluged daily with feedback from institutions and organisations across the world, asserting how the song and the film have become synonymous with the revival of Indian sport.

They added as well that this is perhaps the first time that sports magazines are writing about just one song in their own context.

Senior sports writer and analyst Gulu Ezekiel told indiantelevision.com: "My problem is I have not been able to watch the film, but it is possibly becoming the rallying point for a sports revival."

Ezekiel added: "Honestly, I cannot vouch for it, but there could be something in the song or the film that within a few weeks after its release we won the Asian Hockey, then the Nehru Cup and now the T20 World Cup."

He held that even if there is a one per cent impact on team building with a national spirit, that is good, and said that this kind of song-sport impact has been seen in some instances in the past in the West.

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