Beyond the Boundary review: An hour documentary that ends up being about just glimpses of behind-the-scenes and an attachment of highlights reel
Directed by Anna Stone and part of ICC’s 100% Cricket Project, the documentary ultimately does a disservice to the tournament it is made on
Sunday, March 8 2020, International Women’s Day and final of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in Australia at the packed Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) with an attendance of 86,174 spectators. That was a record for an all-women’s sport, one to remember for the ages. The spectators were treated to Singer Katy Perry who started and ended the World Cup final with her voice.
The 17-day tournament was probably the first women’s cricket tournament which every cricket fan knew about, the fixtures, the squads, the match timings, the players and the venues. As, this was taking place before the Men’s tournament which was supposed to happen in October-November this year and stands postponed due to ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
So, naturally, every single one of them was looking forward to it and had a certain expectations as far as the quality of cricket and the matches were concerned. And, it more than lived up to the expectations.
The tournament which started and ended with India playing the hosts Australia. Australia won the toss and chose to bowl and lost the match by 17 runs, owing to an inspired bowling performance by pocket-sized dynamite leg-spinner Poonam Yadav as former Australia cricketer and commentator Mel Jones said during the innings break, that Australia women should vary of her. And, ending with Australia choosing to bat first in the final and thereby scoring a massive first innings score and pocketing a comprehensive 85-run victory and thus, winning their 5th T20 World Cup.
In the last moments of the film, I choked up seeing the 16-year old Indian opener Shafali Verma crying and almost losing control of her body in emotions into the hands of Harleen Deol. She was one of the few bright stars for India giving explosive starts one after the other and providing the much-needed push to the Indian scores.
In one of the other very fine moments, Australian opener, wicketkeeper and Player of the Final, Alyssa Healy talks about how she has never been a household name prior to a couple of seasons, as she has always been recognized because of being related to famous men (niece of Ian Healy and married to Mitchell Starc) and how World Cup 2017 really put the Women’s Cricket on the cricketing map.
Apart from being many things, this T20 World Cup also marked the debut of the Thailand team. The film was its sweetest when it captured the Thai players, who spoke with honesty and heart. Captain Sornnarin Tippoch spoke about how her family and friends just know that she plays cricket but don’t really know what she does and being a fan of Australian skipper Meg Lanning and how excited she was to meet her and take a photo with her.
Thai players spoke about watching England players on YouTube and Instagram and opener Natthakan Chantham talked about being a fan of English opener Danni Wyatt and she would like to watch her bat, some players even said they would like to grab the catch if she spoons up one in the air, before their match against England.
But these moments are very few and far in between the highlights of the matches from the tournament. Having already seen ‘The Test’ and ‘The Last Dance’ this year, one felt that if ICC really had to invest and show Women’s Cricket to a larger audience through its partnership with Netflix, the 59-minute documentary doesn’t do justice.
It felt like a mishmash of highlights from the matches and ICC’s pre-match and post-match interview footage, with the former taking the center stage. Instead, documentaries, especially the sports one, inherently should be about the stories and behind the scenes with the highlights of the match (the end-result) being complementary to those stories.
One doesn’t really get into the head of these players and the support staff, in crucial moments of the tournament, which one would have liked. One doesn’t really get to know what Smriti Mandhana was feeling when she wasn’t able to get them started she and the team would have liked, or what English team and fans thought when they exited the tournament without having to play the semi-finals and so on. As a result, the film does a disservice to the 17-day tournament by summing up and rushing everything into just one-hour.
Now streaming on Netflix.
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