Aamir bats… and Akshay bowls!

Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty can lose sleep over the forthcoming IPL, but Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar stayed awake and pla...

Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty can lose sleep over the forthcoming IPL, but Aamir Khan and Akshay Kumar stayed awake and played a spirited tournament of knock-out cricket at the P A Mhatre Ground in Juhu on Wednesday night.

Actually, the tournament was limited to the stars and cast of producer and co-writer Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s film 3 Idiots, that included Aamir, director Raju Hirani, music director Shantanu Moitra, lyricist Swanand Kirkire, actors Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Parikshit Sahani and Mona Singh. The gorgeous Kareena Kapoor, who any night will put the IPL cheerleaders in shade, and funny man Boman Irani could not make it as they were engaged in late night shoots elsewhere. But Akshay Kumar turned up unexpectedly and made Aamir’s night and match!

It turned out that both the superstars are fans of each others’ works and, strangely, have only met up twice in careers spanning 20 years. Akshay, who is known for his spontaneity and generosity, came over and won everybody’s heart by making himself available for one of the teams opposing Aamir. And, under lights… the tournament got off.

Vidhu and Raju, who are known to throw themselves into projects they are working on, took the tournament to another level by getting professional umpires and designing T-shirts in different colours for the teams, and also special trophies and medals with spunky titles like Idiots Forever, Pukka Idiot, Most Idiotic Batsman for the winning team; Almost an Idiot, Almost the Most Idiotic Batsman for the runners-up. The teams were broken up into:

Fools (Producer’s Team)
Captain — Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Colour — Red

Duffers (Actors Team)
Captain — Aamir Khan
Colour — Light Blue

Stupids (Director’s Team)
Captain — Rajkumar Hirani
Colour — Green

Dumbos
Art direction, Costumes and make up
Colour — Yellow

The Stupids team led by Raju played and beat the Dumbos. While Aamir’s Duffers teams beat Vidhu’s Fools team despite the presence of superstar Akshay in its ranks. Vidhu smiled in his defeat and said, “3 Idiots is very happy and positive film and we are having a lot of fun making it. It’s moments like these and wonderful relationships one makes in this journey of filmmaking that makes the process worthwhile.” Then Stupids and Duffers played the final and, naturally, Duffers won. Why naturally? Because it had allrounder Bhuvan of Lagaan in it who won the pulsating final in that film against a British Army XI, don’t you remember!