Most actresses, after their heyday, end up marrying and settling down (usually with wealthy men). Actress Sana Javed’s and cricketer Shoaib Malik’s recent wedding would not have been a possibility back in the 1950s and the ’60s, as cricketers then were not looked upon as potential spouse material, as they are now.

Up until the ’90s, we saw successful actresses settling down with fellow successful actors, with prominent doctors, rich businessmen and even established film producers, but rarely cricketers, even though rumours of their flings were aplenty.

In both India and Pakistan, cricketers have the kind of huge following actors can only dream of. But while they were famous, cricketers were not necessarily wealthy. Their main attraction was they played for their country while the filmi people played to the gallery.

Money poured into the game around the late ’70s, and the ’80s saw the rise of cricket in Sharjah, one of the seven states of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE). Bollywood stars were regularly seen attending matches between India and Pakistan there, and such frequent trips usually kept the stars in touch. Flings were regularly reported in the media, and quite a few established cricketers and the actresses ended up tying the knot.

Stumped and bowled over might be popular cricket terminology but they also apply to the private lives of many professional cricket players who fell to the charms of popular fi lm actresses

But there had been a few notable, albeit outside the norm, instances before the 1980s too.

In 1963, the news came like a bolt of lightning straight out of the blue when cricketer-turned-entrepreneur Waqar Hassan got married to Jamila Razzaq, a then up-and-coming Pakistani film actress.

Jamila had worked in Naya Daur (1958), Faisla (1959), Inquilaab (1962) and Ishq ParZor Nahin (1963). She was the daughter of Sultana Razzaq, one of the earliest film actresses from India. Jamila’s grandmother, Fatima Begum, was India’s first female film director (Veer Abhimanyu, 1922).

Waqar’s elder brother Iqbal Shahzad was a prominent Lollywood film

producer who made films such as Banjaaran (1962), Badnaam (1966) and Baazi (1970). Waqar Hassan established a spice manufacturing company and lived a healthy and wealthy life till his death in 2020.

Half a decade later, cupid struck again when, after years of dating, Indian captain Nawab Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi aka MAK fell for the leading actress of the day, the legendary Sharmila Tagore.

Sharmila had been acting from the 1950s (and would continue to do so till the ’80s), working with stalwarts such as Satyajit Ray, Gulzaar, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Yash Chopra and Manmohan Desai. Pataudi was the captain of the Indian cricket team in 1968, while Sharmila was a top heroine, appearing frequently with the Kapoors. Prominent Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan is their son and writer/actress Soha Ali Khan, their daughter. MAK and Sharmila stayed together for 43 years until his death parted them.

The craze for good-looking Pakistani cricketers such as Imran Khan and Mohsin Khan was at its peak in the early ’80s. After his double hundred at Lord’s in 1982, Mohsin, for a brief period, became the face of Pakistan cricket. When cricket ties resumed between Pakistan and India in 1978, Mohsin was the one who benefitted from it the most.

He met the then leading Bollywood actress Reena Roy during a trip and, in 1983, they got married. Reena, with her long tresses, large eyes and hourglass figure was the highest paid actress in those days. Her pairing with Shatrughan Sinha guaranteed instant success for any film, while she had also acted with Rajesh Khanna, Jeetendra, Rakesh Roshan and Shashi Kapoor.

For Mohsin, she left a settled film career to become his wife and, ironically, Mohsin found his way into Bollywood with Reena’s help. After starring in a couple of films, however, Mohsin returned to Pakistan and the two sadly broke up.

Around the same time, Mohsin’s frequent teammate, burly fast bowler Sarfaraz Nawaz fell for Pakistani leading Pakistani film actress Rani. When Rani was admitted to a London Hospital in the early ’80s, Sarfaraz took good care of her and won her heart.

Rani, a superstar during the ’70s and ’80s, had worked in hit films such as Anjuman, Tehzeeb, Umrao Jan Ada and Naag Mani, and was liked for her pairing with Waheed Murad and Shahid. With the film industry going down, Rani also became the first big screen star to work on television, in PTV Lahore centre serials Khwahish and Faraib. She married Sarfaraz and it is said she was instrumental in his foray into politics later as well. However, their pairing did not last and Rani died of a resurgent cancer in 1993.

By the mid-90s, lucrative sponsorships had turned cricketers into superstars, and soon they were rubbing shoulders with their celluloid counterparts. The first one to fall for the flashy lifestyle was Indian captain Muhammad Azharuddin.

Famous for scoring three hundreds in his first three Test matches, Azhar was already married when he was swept off his feet by the tall and curvaceous Bollywood actress Sangeeta Bijlani. The damsel who turned heads in Tridev (1989) was also a successful model. The couple got married in 1996, only to be divorced in 2010.

With India winning the 2011 World Cup and the rendezvous with film stars increasing through the Indian Premier League, many more such marriages materialised. Five of the 15-member Indian squad of the 2011 World Cup ended up marrying actresses. Virat Kohli got the ‘most coveted’ actress Anushka Sharma.

Anushka is a versatile actor and movies with the three leading Khans, such as PK (2014), Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012) and Sultan (2016), is clear proof of it.

All-rounder Yuvraj Singh, pacer Zaheer Khan and spinner Harbhajan Singh settled (respectively) with Hazel Keech, Sagarika Ghatge and Geeta Basra, who never had a profile as big as Anushka, but had also been quite successful.

The current Indian cricket team has two players who are married to actresses. Wicket keeper K.L. Rahul got hitched with actor Sunil Shetty’s daughter Athiya Shetty. Athiya had worked in a couple of Bollywood films before the liaison in 2023. All-rounder

Hardik Pandya, considered one the best all-rounders of the modern era, is married to Serbian model and dancer Natasa Stankovic, who has also acted in Bollywood.

If one goes through the names of cricketers who have actress wives, a 12-member team that could qualify as an all-time XI can easily be compiled (there is a wicket-keeper, reliable openers, a dependable middle-order, fast bowlers, spinners and a dashing captain to begin with).

Published in Dawn, ICON, March 17th, 2024