Taapsee Pannu sharpens her cricket skills as she preps for Shabaash Mithu

India — Taapsee Pannu is all set to play a cricketer in her next, Shabaash Mithu. The film is a biopic on the life of former Team India cricketer Mithali Raj. She has shared two pictures from her prep for the film which will be shot over two months.

Taking to her Instagram Stories, Taapsee shared a picture of herself practising at the nets at night and captioned it, “A week down.” She is seen in a white tee and black tights paired with leg-guards and gloves as she aims to hit a ball. Another picture shows her practising an off side shot and wrote in caption, “7 days down.7 to go. Work in progress.”

Talking about the film, Taapsee had told Mid-Day in an interview, “I was roped in because Mithali and I have similar life approach and ideologies. We don’t want to replicate the look to the tee.” She added, “We want to make it as convincing as possible, but it’s not as important to look like her as it is to perform and behave like her. I was constantly in touch with her while shooting for the poster. She texted me saying that there’s barely any difference between her and me [in the poster]. That validation matters a lot. I want her to say this after watching the movie, too.”

Taapsee was last seen as a homemaker in Anubhav Sinha’s critically acclaimed film, Thappad. Post lockdown, the actor has been working on multiple films back to back. She wrapped up Haseen Dillruba in October last year. She described her character of Rani Kashyap as a ‘self obsessed borderline narcissist character’. It also stars Vikrant Massey, Hansika Motwani and Harshvardhan Rane.

Taapsee then moved to Rashmi Rocket and wrapped up the shoot in January. She plays a Gujarati athlete in the film and trained hard to perfect her running skills. Soon after, she began working on Shabaash Mithu.