Striker (2010 film)

Born into a poor family, Suryakant Sarang grows up with few luxuries. Poor health keeps him away from school often, and that is when his elder brother, Chandrakant, introduces him to carrom. Winning the Junior Carrom Championship at 12 is not enough to keep Surya's fire for the sport burning through adolescence. Hopes for a job in Dubai replace the passion for carrom as Surya grows into a young man. Duped by a bogus overseas employment agency, Surya loses all his hard-earned money he had saved for going to Dubai. Surya is forced to cross paths with Jaleel. Since the 70's when the settlements in the ghetto began, Jaleel had acquired a strong hold in the area. He had his hands in every illicit activity since then. Feeding on the weaknesses of people, Jaleel was the self-proclaimed king of Malwani. Reintroduced to carrom by his childhood friend Zaid, this time to the carrom hustling scene, Surya starts playing again. Being cheated of his hard-earned money by the same man who had caused misery for many families, Surya decides to take on Jaleel on his turf. His patience and cool attitude are his biggest strengths, but life has its own ways of testing it.

• Siddharth as Suryakant Sarang
• Usha Jadhav as Rajni
• Padmapriya as Madhu
• Aditya Pancholi as Jaleel (local crime boss)
• Ankur Vikal as Zaid
• Anupam Kher as Inspector Farooque
• Seema Biswas as Surya's mother
• Anup Soni as Chandrakant Sarang
• Vidya Malvade as Devi Sarang
• Nicolette Bird as Noorie
• Bhavya Gandhi as young Suryakant

The film fared very poorly at the Indian box office. Though it was given only a one-week theatrical run, it garnered critical acclaim. However, being the first film in history to premiere the same day on YouTube, the film garnered over 800,000 views in the first 2 weeks. Estimated profits from this are said to be over USD 1mn.

The soundtrack album of Striker consists of 8 songs composed by various artists such as Vishal Bhardwaj, noted Tamil composer Yuvan Shankar Raja in his Bollywood debut, Amit Trivedi, rapper Blaaze, Shailendra Barve and lyricist-singer Swanand Kirkire, whilst lyrics are penned by Nitin Raikwar, Blaaze, Prashant Ingole, Jeetendra Joshi, Swanand Kirkire and Gulzar. Shri was the music producer and composed the original soundtrack. The album was released on 12 January 2010.

• Striker at IMDb
• Striker at Sulekha