RADIO SARGAM SPECIAL REPORT:
BOLLYWOOD CREATES ‘CRICKETAINMENT’!

India’s entertainment and sports marketing company, PDM (Percept D’Mark), announced its new initiative ‘Film Cricket Board’ (FCB) in association with the leading luminaries from the amphitheater of film and cricket. The core aim of FCB would be revolving around the unity of the film industry to serve various charities on a continuous basis using ‘Cricket’ as the medium.

'Cricketainment' is a convergence of cricket and entertainment targeted at Indian and global audiences. It will be bringing the stars from films/showbiz to play with various teams around the world. For the audiences and spectators, this game is fun-filled excitement since they would be watching their favourite celebrities playing serious cricket on grounds.

Popular Bollywood actor Sunil Shetty has been appointed the captain of FCB team. “The film industry has always looked towards cricketing heroes & are now willing to put in their best talent to converge cricket and entertainment at the cricket ground through FCB,” the actor commented.

The Managing Director of PDM (Percept D’Mark) Mr. Shailendra Singh adds, “Innovation is the key to the growth of any product, even being a sport like cricket, which has immense mass appeal as well as the biggest following among the NRI Diaspora across the world. FCB will be a great platform to showcase a unique, exclusive and spectacular display of Cricketing action from our very own entertainers. A combination of sport and entertainment.”

For their first cricketing season – September ‘05 to August ‘06, matches have already been confirmed and scheduled globally in Australia, Singapore & UK. In India the FCB Team will play 2 matches in Mumbai, 1 in Delhi, 1 in Kolkata. Countries such as, South Africa, Dubai and Pakistan have also shown interest in hosting some matches.

FCB XI will compete against various other celebrity teams and clubs from India and other parts of the world, at some of the greatest venues of the cricket world.

Partners already on board supporting the FCB are - Adidas will provide clothing to the FCB Team, Oakley’s will be their eyewear provider, Tensports is the channel partner, Kingfisher Airlines the airline partner and Times Group as the media partner.

FCB Members on board (in alphabetical order):

Aditya Pancholi
Aftab Shivdasani
Ajay Devgan
Akshay Kumar
Akashdeep Sehgal
Arbaaz Khan
Ashish Chowdhary
Ashmit Patel
Babul Supriyo
Bikram Saluja
Boman Irani
Dino Morea
Farhan Akhtar
Irfan Khan
Jimmy Shergill
Mahesh Manjrekar
Makarand Deshpande
Marc Robinson
Rahul Dev
Ritesh Deshmukh
R.Madhavan
Rohit Roy
Ronit Roy
Salil Ankoli
Sameer Dattani
Sandeep Patil
Sanjay Dutt
Sanjay Kapoor
Sanjay Suri
Satish Shah
Shadab Khan
Shawar Ali
Siddharth Kanan
Sohail Khan
Suniel Shetty (captain)
Vikas Kalantri
Vishal Bharadwaj
Yash Tonk
Zulfi Sayed

WRITTEN BY GOHER IQBAL PUNN (Bollywood Analyst)