Jersey Trailer: Shahid Kapoor tries to fill big shoes of Telugu blockbuster in this cricket movie

After a comic tryst with cricket in the 2009 Shahid Kapoor and Rani Mukherji starrer Dil Bole Hadippa!, Shahid Kapoor will be seen in the remake of the 2019 Telugu blockbuster - Jersey where he will play the role of a failed cricketer making a late comeback in his thirties for his son who wants to see his father don the Team India jersey. While the Telugu cinema outing was led by Nani, the Bollywood outing of Jersey will have Shahid Kapoor slipping into the largely emotional character of Arjun - who embarks on a journey of self-salvation for the sake of his family.

Bent on earning respect from his son, Shahid Kapoor, for a change, will be seen playing a father on-screen in this movie as well, a different character shade to explore. The trailer of the film takes us through Arjun's married life where he is unemployed and broke and has to even resort to stealing money from his wife's purse (played by Mrunal Thakur) to fulfill his son's birthday wish - to get a cricket jersey. Agonized by the fact that he would lose respect in front of his son, Arjun meets with his former coach from his swashbuckling cricketing days, Pankaj Kapur (Shahid's real-life father), who plants the idea of a possible comeback in Arjun's mind. However, the only catch is that his family threatens to leave him if he decides to choose cricket so late in his life, as well.

The trailer also has several flashback scenes of a younger, college-going Shahid Kapoor who could charm the willow and the women with his flamboyance as a star cricketer. Snippets of his romance with Mrunal Thakur are also shown as are days of Shahid channeling his aggression that is eerily still reminiscent of Shahid's Kabir Singh outing. In fact, the look of the older Arjun is very similar to Kabir Singh as well and it does seem that Shahid may have married the two characters in some places while playing Arjun's aggressive and hurt states.

Jersey, is ultimately about showing that there is no such 'perfect time' for anything - success cannot be timed and it can happen equally, both early and late and one shouldn't simply give up.

All in all, the remake of the National award-winning 2019 Telugu film does look promising and it is exciting to see Shahid back on our screens. Directed by Gowtam Tinnanuri, who also helmed the Telugu original, the movie is set to hit the theatres on 31st December 2021. Shahid, who mentioned that he was deeply moved by the original film and even cried 'four-five times' after seeing Nani in the role of Arjun, came across the movie when he was at a particularly confusing stage in life.

"I watched Jersey before Kabir Singh. The time when I saw it, I was unhappy. I used to think where my career would go, what I will do next. So, I could relate to the story of Jersey, which is about late success. It's about a man who finds glory at a time when people retire," Kapoor mentioned in an Instagram live, visibly excited for this new venture.