Cricket is a very unfamiliar sport for most Chinese, and you may have heard of baseball and softball, but you must have heard very little about cricket.
It is such a sport that most people in china do not know, but in our neighboring country India is a highly popular sport. According to statistics a few years ago, more than 700 million of India's 1.2 billion people at that time played cricket at least 4 times a year, and 85% of them would pay attention to cricket matches. Cricket, a religion in India to be precise, is a sport that children play in every corner of India. In 2010, the US media reported that the brand value of the Indian Cricket Super League IPL even exceeded the Olympic Games and the Football World Cup, comparable to the NFL, the NBA, and Forbes magazine listed IPL as the world's hottest sports league.
The upcoming film "Indian Girl", which will be released on March 18, tells the story of poor girl Cosy and cricket. Chloe, a girl from a peasant family, loved cricket since she was influenced by her father, but in India, where women's social status is low, cricket has always been considered a sport that belongs only to men, which also makes girls' dreams of chasing cricket hindered in the first place. After seeing the girl's persistence in cricket and the talent shown in training, the father resolutely decided to do his best to support his daughter to take to a bigger stage, as the training level continued to improve, Cosy finally qualified to participate in international competitions, shouldering the expectations of her father and the people of the whole country, can the girl defeat the strong opponent and win? ”
Such an extraordinary story reminds me of the Indian word-of-mouth masterpiece "Wrestling, Daddy", which harvested billions of box office in China a few years ago, also from the son-oriented country of India, also participated in sports that were considered to belong only to men, and they broke all kinds of doubts and obstacles to create their own new life.
As far as the mixed martial arts sport that I like is concerned, it is also a sport that few people are engaged in in in China, and the prototype character in the movie "Wrestling, Daddy" is the third sister Ritu Foga, who has changed from wrestling to enter the mixed martial arts arena, and has also come to China to participate in competitions. Although in recent years, with the rise of short video platforms, mixed martial arts has received considerable attention in mainland China, it was really an unpopular project that no one cared about decades ago.
Presumably, many users who like short videos have brushed up on the video of Zhang Tiequan, the first person in the Chinese UFC, playing in Japan, squatting alone by the iron cage without a coach and assistant between rounds, in stark contrast to the opponents who are hugging in front of and behind. Although there were some misunderstandings at that time, Zhang Tiequan was also accompanied by a coach in that game, but Zhang Tiequan's UFC trip in those years can really be said to be a lonely dream.
Born in Inner Mongolia in 1980, Zhang Tiequan has loved wrestling and wrestling since he was a child, so he saved money to buy sports equipment to train strength and practice wrestling. When he was in junior high school, Zhang Tiequan briefly practiced wrestling for a year, but was later forced to return home to farm because of his family's poverty. After that, he dropped out of school and did a lot of hard work, moving cement, carrying sandbags, working as a vegetable messenger, a security guard, and a gas canister, which was a few years. Until later, Zhang Tiequan, under the introduction of his friends, went to practice Sanda and achieved some good results, and later turned to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and entered the field of mixed martial arts.
More than a decade ago, Zhang Tiequan's income from mixed martial arts competitions was very small. At that time, the network was not as developed as it is now, mixed martial arts was also very niche in China, not many people paid attention, his popularity was not enough, of course, there could not be many sponsorship costs, and the income of each game was very small, so it was necessary to support daily living and training expenses. For MMA athletes who do not have much income, in addition to the hardships of life and training, the pain after the competition is also unbearable.
It was such a difficult situation that Zhang Tiequan persevered until he entered the world's largest fighting event UFC and created his own boxing gym in Beijing. Although Zhang Tiequan did not achieve much good results in the UFC, Li Jingliang and Yan Xiaonan, who he led, have now entered the official ranking in the UFC, and now their strength and fame are at their peak, and Zhang Tiequan, the pioneer of mixed martial arts, is often talked about.
From "Wrestling Daddy" to the recent release of "Indian Girl" and watching the trailer of the movie, as an audience who loves sports and loves sports movies, the author is very resonant. On a well-known rating website in China, there are several film reviews about "Indian Girl".
"Whether it is cricket or piano, whether it is dance or music, colorful dreams are beautiful, and the road to chasing dreams is bound to be bitter."
"When people say we can't do it, trust yourself. It's warm, it's burning, it's deep! How much we have to go through before we can bravely say no to rules, no to the world, and no to prejudice. "That's exactly what the film is trying to say.
We have begun to look forward to the release of "Indian Girl", and witness this dream-chasing sports story together on March 18.