(From top) Sohail Khan plays a struggling boxer in Aryan; Aamir?s Lagaan XI made most of the cricket mania

One of the most memorable ?entry? shots in Bollywood history is a drenched and dimpled Shah Rukh Khan racing through the football field in Dilwale Dulhaniya La Jayenge. He may not have done a Saptapadi a la Uttam Kumar, but his goal-scoring skills were enough to get the girls going deewana even before Kajol had set sights on her hero. Since then, Arjun Rampal?s tried the soccer act and so has Aftab Shivdasani, but that magic has clearly been missing.

Football, of course, has never quite managed to rise above the montage sequences on the Bollywood screen despite Gurinder Chadha scoring so big with Bend It Like Beckham aka Football Shootball Hay Rabba.

But it?s football focus time now with director Vivek Agnihotri, who debuted last year with the stylish Usual Suspects rip-off Chocolate, making a mega soccer film with some of the biggest names in tinsel town.

?I am making it for UTV and they won?t make anything small after Rang De Basanti,? Vivek says. ?It is a huge project on the scale of films like Krrish and Don. The game of football is the device I have chosen to tell my story. I am obviously not making a documentary on the sport.?

The film, tentatively titled Football, is being mounted on such a huge scale that UTV has got special permission to shoot the World Cup matches in Germany this summer, the footage of which will punctuate the movie. So, the shooting of the movie officially kicks off with the world?s most-watched sports tournament in June.

Not just Football, other sports films are taking the Bollywood field in a big way. And mind you, it?s no longer just about cricket. Lagaan and Iqbal might have been accorded cult status in the pages of Indian celluloid, but the next generation of directors is ready to cover uncharted grounds with far less popular sports.

Soham Shah, who made his debut last year with the horror-cum-wildlife film Kaal, is planning his next movie for Karan Johar?s Dharma Productions on adventure sports. ?I know it is risky but there is the novelty factor, too,? he says. ?I would be presenting something that has never been seen before on the Bollywood screen. I am doing a lot of research so that I am able to weave a film around the different kinds of adventure sports.?

First-time director Abhishek Kapoor is being less adventurous, trying to box his way to the big screen. His Aryan will try to recreate the magic of great boxing films like Martin Scorsese?s Raging Bull, Clint Eastwood?s Million Dollar Baby and Ron Howard?s Cinderella Man, not to forget our very own Mithunda as The Boxer.

The story and setting of the Sohail Khan-starrer in many ways sum up the ethos behind the emergence of non-cricket sports flicks.

?In our country, not just boxing, sports like badminton and shooting are completely overlooked,? says Abhishek. ?My film tries to trace all the frustrations and tribulations that the protagonist has to go through to climb the ladder.?

Another reason why the fresh crop of film-makers is choosing different sports as the backdrop for their movies is the tool called technology that now allows them to make a film with production values akin to Jerry Maguire or Any Given Sunday. ?Before, there was no money and no awareness to pull off a sports film,? feels Vivek. ?Now, the new directors are ready to try different things and they have the technical skills to back their imagination.?

Sure they do, otherwise Shah Rukh Khan would never have agreed to wield the hockey stick to play the game rather than to bash up baddies, Bollywood style. Shimit Amin?s forthcoming Chak De has King Khan not only playing the sport but also serving as coach of the women?s (!) hockey team. While Shimit (Ab Tak Chhappan) and his Yashraj production team are struggling to find 11 good-looking girls good enough to dribble and shoot, the dying sport may get a much-required facelift with SRK in the act.

At the end of the game, like the two success stories Lagaan and Iqbal, all sports films are tales of heroism against the odds.

Safe big-screen bets, huh?