synopsis

The late Lalit Upadhyay founded the Omkar Group of companies in Delhi. Lalit and his wife Sudha had two sons – Ramesh and Uday Upadhyay. While Ramesh worked in his family business from an early age, Uday pursued music and became a Sitar player. After Lalit’s premature death, Sudha and Ramesh grew the company into a large publicly listed organization with pan-India presence. Ramesh Upadhyay’s two sons – Akash and Gagan also joined the family business, but Uday Upadhyay’s son Neil shunned the family business and became a professional cricketer. Akash succeeded his father as the CEO of the Omkar group, but a union strike instigated by Gagan forced him to leave the company and start his own company – the AlphaX technologies with the help of his father-in-law. Akash never forgave Gagan and vowed to destroy his life and business. Over the next two decades, while AlphaX technologies became a Nasdaq-listed world-renowned company, the Omkar group under Gagan’s leadership floundered and became a sick business on the verge of closure.

Although Neil had lost his parents at an early age, his uncle Ramesh spared no expense nor effort to support his aspirations to become a cricketer. Neil had won the ICC emerging cricketer award, and experts considered him as the best Indian fast bowler after Kapil Dev, but he did not become a superstar of Indian cricket even after getting multiple opportunities to play in the Indian Cricket team. After retiring from Cricket, Neil had started a Cricket coaching business with Gagan, but that venture failed because of Gagan’s incompetence and Akash stalling their progress at every step.

Now in his early 40s, Neil unfulfilled potential tormented him and made him desperate for redemption. He gets a “call to action” when he is evicted from the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium – the same place where eight years ago he had taken 5 wickets for 26 runs to help India win a test series against the Australians. He gets a glimmer of hope for redemption when the Indian Cricket Board launched the Indian Club Cricket League (ICCL). Neil asks his uncle Ramesh to buy a cricket team and appoint him the Head Coach, but his grandma – Sudha Upadhyay, the reigning matriarch of the family, opposes his plans and orders him to stop wasting his life with Cricket and join the family business. She orders Ramesh to accommodate Neil in the family business, and when he refuses, she threatens to give Neil her shares in the company.

Around the same time, Ramesh and Gagan were trying to get new investment into the Omkar group to save it from closure – a move Akash was stalling to remove Gagan as CEO and acquire the whole company at a low valuation. Meanwhile, Capt. Jayshankar Pandit (husband of Ramesh’s daughter – Nandini) becomes interested in the cricket betting business and offers to not only invest in the Omkar group but also buy a cricket team co-owned by Gagan and Neil as Head Coach. Ramesh approves this plan as he could use this bait to turn Neil against Sudha and prevent him from joining the company or getting her shares. But, Akash was aghast at Sudha’s plan to give Neil a share of the family’s wealth when he, just like his father, had done nothing to help the family. He wanted to destroy Neil and also stop Jayshankar from bailing out the Omkar group. So, to stall the partnership between Gagan and Jayshankar, he offers them absolute autonomy over the Omkar group – a promise he never intended to keep, if they allowed him to buy the Cricket team.

Neil is excited about the prospect of earning respect in his family by coaching the family’s team to glory. But, Akash dashed his hopes by appointing Pattrick ‘O’ Donnell (Pat) – a famous former South African cricketer as the Head Coach of the team. Uncle Ramesh urges Neil to accept the position of Assistant Coach of the team, but Neil refuses to play second fiddle to Pat. However, Kanika Suri’s arrival in India from Singapore as the Director of Operations of the ICCL forces him to change his mind. Kanika was his former girlfriend who had dumped him and disappeared from his life 13 years ago — a blow from which his life and career had never recovered. Her reemergence at a critical point in his life reignited his desire for ‘love’ and ‘reconciliation,’ and he realized that professional success would be critical for sustaining her new interest in him. He accepts the position since he had no other way of pursuing his plans. Although he would have no direct authority in the team, he is confident he would get his due if he can show his value in the team.

A few weeks into the tournament, Jayshankar dies under mysterious circumstance, ending Gagan’s last hope of saving the Omkar group. By this time, the team had lost 6 games in a row. Neil is desperate to improve the team’s performance, but he is not able to impact the outcome as Akash had ordered Pat to sideline Neil. Then one day, Gagan told Neil that he had solid proof of Pat’s wrongdoings, which can help him topple Pat and take control of the team. Using Gagan’s help, Neil blackmails Pat to give up control of the team and make him the unofficial Head Coach. In his new
role, Neil revamps the team’s strategy and preparation, and the team wins the next match under his watch.

Soon after settling down in his new role, Neil gets a call from the mafia asking for team information. They claim to have a video of Neil’s conversation with Pat and threaten to leak the video if he does not comply. Gagan was working for the mafia, and they had used him to compromise Neil and control the team. Neil confronts Gagan, but Gagan assaults him and threatens to kill him if he rebelled. Neil compromises and makes peace with his conscience by explaining to himself that he was only giving away harmless information which couldn’t harm the team. However, the mafia’s demands escalate, and soon they influence team selection and match strategy.

Neil’s initiatives for the team had impressed Akash, but his admiration turned into hatred when his contacts in the underworld informed him that Neil was working for the match-fixing mafia. Thus, he appoints Sanket Singh – a retired IPS officer to catch Neil and expose his reality to the world.

Neil avoids Sanket’s traps and manages both the mafia and the team’s performance. But, the situation reaches a breaking point when the team enters the final, and the mafia asks him to lose the final match. Neil is within sight of redemption and unwilling to compromise, and appeals to Akash for help, who trashes him for endangering the team’s reputation for his selfish interests. He orders Neil to step down and hand over the team to Pat, but Neil refuses and asks Akash to find a way out. When Akash learns that Gagan was leading this mafia operation and how fixing the final match was essential for his survival, he uses Gagan’s perilous position to his advantage. As part of a new deal, Akash agrees to force Neil to lose the final in return for Gagan and Ramesh giving him their shares of the Omkar group.

Next day, Akash tries to convince Neil to lose the final, but Neil refuses to comply. That evening, Neil goes to meet his family where his grandma (Sudha) and uncle (Ramesh) lambasts him for refusing to help the family and orders him to lose the match for Gagan’s sake. On witnessing his family’s disdain for his aspirations, Neil realizes the fallacy of his desire to impress his family with his achievements. He understands that no one cared for his fight for redemption or his quest for respect and considers fixing the final match just so that his family wouldn’t be able to accuse him and his father of selfishness. However, he learns from a late night conversation with his cousin Nandini (who had moved to the US after her husband -Jayshankar’s death to escape the family politics) about Kanika’s dark reality and how he was a pawn in the battle between Gagan and Akash. He vows never to betray the game he loved and teams up with Pat to plan and execute a strategy to save the final from the machinations
of the mafia.