Telugu romantic hero Siddharth takes his second step into Bollywood after Rang De Basanti, as a carom player in Striker

He describes it as "50 pairs of in-laws in a room judging one boy". Siddharth is talking about staging a scene in his movie Striker, in which he plays a star carom player from Malwani, Surya, who pockets big money when he turns out as the champ. For the movie, Siddharth, his family's most "rubbish" carom player, had to perform before 150 fantastic champions as they staged the underground playing areas.

"I felt them watching me, judging meu2026 it was ridiculous," he says laughingly as he crunches through cereal during this breakfast interview at his swanky hotel in Juhu, "Any small mistake and I would hear 'tsk!' from 150 people. That's enough then you can't bring on this all-conquering champion look in your eyes. It was really difficult!"

Five coins, in seconds

Speaking allegorically, Siddharth sees confident carom playing as a piece of complicated choreography in a dance sequence. After all, try pocketing five coins one after the other, in seconds. This is why he had to specially train under a player from Malwani, Zayed, for the Chandan Arora-directed film (Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon, Main, Meri Patni Aur Woh), releasing on February 5.

Striker took its time coming, but Siddharth is visibly excited when he talks about the film, set in the '80s. Surya is a poor player from the ghetto who hits it big in the underground gambling carom scene, but is unable to pull himself out of the vortex of his circumstances.