As Veera Kaur a.k.a Veer Pratap Singh landed in Pune, it was without her trademark willow bat or her bright Patiala shalwars. Dressed in a simple black dress, with minimal make-up and straight hair, Rani was the epitome of calm and quite unlike her boisterous screen persona. “It took me six months to learn to play cricket well enough to portray my role onscreen. When I started out, I did not even know the basics of the game. But at the end of shooting, I could play like a pro,” says the vibrant Rani, surrounded by a posse of media persons at the newly-opened Fame Multiplex in Fatima Nagar.

“I dressed in those bright outfits as Veera Kaur, since all Punjabi women are so full of life. And in this film, I got to play both a pretty girl and a young Sikh lad, all agog about playing cricket. I truly had the best of both worlds,” says the 31-year-old actress, who looks not a year older than 25, in her new, chic avatar. When asked what was more challenging for her, playing a boy or a cricketer, in ‘Dil Bole Hadippa’, she says, “It’s amazing how nobody has homed onto the fact that I’ve played cricket like a pro, in the film. I mean, critics are commenting on everything in the film, except my cricket. I guess it means that my cricket shots appear natural and effortless and I take that as a compliment.”

Produced by the Yash Raj Films (YRF) banner, the Rani Mukherjee-Shahid Kapoor starrer has been directed by Anurag Singh and tells the story of a young woman, who pretends to be a man, in order to join an all-male cricket team. Speaking of her long association with the YRF banner, Rani says in all the films she has done with the production company, she was given something challenging to do. “I’ve always wanted to play such roles as those in Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music and with YRF, I’ve got the opportunity to play a fairy in ‘Thoda Pyar, Thoda Magic’. And in ‘Hadippa’, I’ve played a man!! Now, where else would I get a chance to do such roles?” she demands.

... contd.