Ali Fazal has cemented his space as one of the most bankable stars in Bollywood. However, before becoming an actor, he dreamt of pursuing sports, and that too, basketball. In an exclusive chat on mid-day’s podcast series The Bombay Film Story, Ali takes a trip down memory lane and shares a fun anecdote from his school days. He reveals how he dreamt of being into sports; however, he lost the opportunity due to injuries.

Ali Fazal on his dream of pursuing basketball

When asked if Ali was the popular kid in school whom everyone would look up to, he answers, “No, I was, in a sense, because Oberoi House was known to have all the rattus. Finally, school academics were rising with our batch. It was a huge batch of 80 people across all houses, and Oberoi was like the studious were getting cred. The padhakus (studious) were, like, suddenly also good in sports — that was unknown. I was like, wait, what`s happening, man?”

He added, “So we used to get a bad rep. Suddenly, there were two-three of us who were good in studies but were also playing basketball, soccer, hockey, football and cricket, of course. But hockey and basketball were my sports. So, I was captaining these. And basketball, I captained for almost 3 years. As a junior, that`s a big deal because I was captaining seniors. In fact, at that time, the school team had Arkesh Singh Deo, Nischay Mittal, all these guys — they played for India also at the time.”