A 222-minute film, Laagan, has been accepted as one of the most successful Indian blockbusters of recent years, both in India and abroad. Laagan, for the author, is a commentary, in the filmic and imaginative mode, on the evolution and development of cricket in colonial India. This article draws on the representations of the game in the film to comment on the lost realities of Indian cricket, facts largely ignored in existing historiography on the subject. Laagan helps rectify certain conventional wisdoms about the evolution of cricket in India, viewing it as more than an aristocratic pastime of certain elite groups. The cricket match shown in the movie becomes an arena for asserting indigenous strength against the might of the colonial state. The sporting prowess of the villagers and their ultimate victory helped them emphasize that their 'Indian' identity was in no way inferior to the Whites'. Native mastery of the colonial sport of cricket had thus emerged as the leveller between the colonizer and the colonized. Unlike claims made in conventional historiography of cricket in India, the sport, as seen by the author, was also used for purposes of resistance by the Indians, a fact this article aims to demonstrate, using the fictional tale in Lagaan as a point of entry into such untold histories.