Helming the second season of Sixer was an opportunity Divyanshu Malhotra was only too happy about. There was only one hitch. “It was about a topic that I didn’t know much of,” he says of the series that revolves around a group of local cricketers navigating interpersonal relationships and politics.
As he joined the MX Player drama led by actor and writer Shivankit Singh Parihar, Malhotra knew he had to dive deep into cricket. Only then would he be able to amp up the drama. He shares, “Shivankit and Harish [Peddinti, writer] had elevated the second season. These people breathed cricket, while I was a casual viewer. So, for the next few months, I kept watching matches and my wife was puzzled, saying, ‘You’ve never loved cricket so much. What’s happening?’”
Divyanshu Malhotra
Eventually, the director’s weakness became his biggest strength. He explains, “I want to watch cricket that excites me as a viewer. So, I got the opportunity to think from the audience’s perspective — how do I direct the matches so that they’d be entertaining?”
The filmmaker is now looking to the future. He is setting up his own studio, Sukhna Studios. “I won’t be able to direct every story I believe in. So, I may develop it with writers, or produce it with a younger director at the helm. I want to enable younger directors.”