Former Team India cricketer Sourav Ganguly will not play a cameo in Netflix’s upcoming Kolkata-set crime thriller Khakee: The Bengal Chapter, he said on Friday, putting an end to the speculations about his role in the Neeraj Pandey series.
“No, no, I’m not,” Ganguly said in response to a text message from The Telegraph Online seeking confirmation on whether he is acting in the upcoming show or not.
Reports about Ganguly’s possible cameo in the show stemmed from Khakee: The Bengal Chapter maker Neeraj Pandey’s response to a question during a promotional event in Kolkata on Wednesday.
“Keep looking,” Pandey had said about Ganguly’s cameo in the show starring Jeet, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Parambrata Chattopadhyay and other Tollywood A-listers.
Photos of Ganguly in a police uniform, seemingly from an advertisement shoot for the show, also went viral on social media, adding to the buzz.
Ganguly is the host of a popular Bengali quiz show, Dadagiri.
Khakee: The Bengal Chapter is the first Hindi drama to boast an entirely Bengali cast, mostly actors who work in the Kolkata film industry.
Directed by Tushar Kanti Ray and Debatma Mandal, the upcoming series is the follow-up to the filmmaker's 2022 show Khakee: The Bihar Chapter.
The Bengal Chapter is "set in the early 2000s, in a city dominated by power-hungry gangsters and politicians where the law often struggled to maintain a balance," as per the makers.
Pandey is known for films like Baby, Aiyaary, Special 26, M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story and Sikandar Ka Muqaddar.
Ganguly, 52, was one of the most successful Indian cricket team captains, leading India to several Test wins and a World Cup final overseas. His exit from the national team following alleged rift with then Team India coach Greg Chappel, and his return to the team after a long break, is still a much-talked-about topic among cricket fans in India.
The left-handed batter had an illustrious career, with over 7,000 Test runs and more than 11,000 runs in ODIs. In 2008, he led Kolkata Knight Riders in the first season of Indian Premier League.
Rajkummar Rao is set to play Ganguly in the cricketer’s biopic.
