Why '22 ls Tahir Raj Bhasin's Year

After proving his mettle in ensemble casts as well as opposite stalwarts, the actor has now had four back-to-back releases in about one-and-a-half months, and he is just getting started

- Ananya Ghosh

It is 2013. Ali Hashmi makes his debut in the Indian Cricket Team with an exquisite cover drive hitting a boundary. And just like that, Ali Hashmi aka Tahir Raj Bhasin, the actor playing the young batsman in Kai Po Che!, gets off the mark.

Cut to 2021, he dons the cricket whites and opens for team India again, this time to play one of the legends of the game, Sunil Gavaskar. One can say that life has come full circle of sorts for Tahir Raj Bhasin. “I had been in Mumbai for a month at that point and I had never been on a set before. I had landed the part because the actor who was supposed to play the role had dropped out at the last minute. I was told that it is the character of a guy who, in his very first match playing for the Indian cricket team, gets to open for the team, and hits a boundary in the first ball. I thought it was a beautiful metaphor for the very first thing you do on screen. Never had I thought then that I would get an opportunity to play Sunil Gavaskar on screen," he seems still in a state of daze.

In between, Bhasin has proved his mettle as an actor - be it as part of an ensemble cast, or playing an alpha-male antagonist. While he dominated the screen as coldblooded human trafficker, Walt, standing next to Rani Mukerji in Mardaani, it was Derek, the college stud in Chhichhore, that really changed the game for Tahir. The movie not only won five Filmfare nominations, it also bagged the National Award. "Chichhore was the biggest turning point. Derek might be a college stud, but he was also an emotionally fragile character. After that, the industry started to see me from a more commercial hero's lens. 2022 is the culmination of a lot of work that I got after Chhichhore."