Mauka Mauka

The advert for the India-Pakistan match was made by a crew of ten people and completed in five days. The production crew consisted of members of Bubblewrap Films, an ad film production house in Mumbai, as well as two freelance music directors Vinayak Salvi and Rohan Utpat who were on-boarded two days before the shoot. Salvi said, "According to the brief, we gave it a Pakistani flavour, making it like a contemporary qawwali." According to Utpat, they did not use subcontinent cricket terms like chauka (boundary) to make it "a more universal emotion."[11][12] The director of Bubblewrap Films, Suresh Triveni said, "We wanted a song that would make sense even without the video. So no cricketing terms were used. The song has strains of Sufi and qawwali in a Coke Studio style and the lyrics give the idea of a wanderer in search of the almighty."[13] The Star Sports' creative team - Juju Basu, Mustafa Rangwala, Prathamesh Sapte, Ajeet Mestry and Rohit Khanna [14][15][16][2][17] from marketing came up with the "Mauka" idea and subsequent scripts while the lyrics for the jingle was penned by Vikas Dubey (also from Star Sports).[18]

Triveni picked Vishal Malhotra to play the character of the Pakistani supporter.[13] The music composers approached Chandigarh-based singer Alamgir Khan to record the jingle for the advert. Khan, who had previously collaborated on the soundtracks of Bollywood films such as Bodyguard and Shaadi Ke Side Effects, revealed that he was reluctant to sing the jingle for the advert and that the producers had to convince him hard.[19] The song was composed and sung in a day, and the agency completed the shoot of the advert within five days, after which post-production was carried out.[13]

The advert for the India–Pakistan match received positive reviews in India, but Pakistanis "ran afoul and used every possible media front to oppose the campaign." The Express Tribune wrote that the campaign "had successfully ignited a ‘healthy’ sporting rivalry in the most subtle way as possible."[20] Regarding the positive response for the jingle, Khan said in a TV show, "I never thought this would become such a popular jingle. It is on everybody’s lips these days. I have been told that the Indian team in Australia has also liked it very much."[21]

After the first advert went viral on social media with over 12 million online views,[6][22] the team at Star Sports[23] decided to turn it into a campaign by scripting adverts for all of India's subsequent matches in a storyline format. The production house shot two versions for each match–one for India winning the previous match and one for India losing it–and released the appropriate version as soon as the previous match concluded.[24][18] Many spoof and response videos from creators like TVF[25] and V Seven Pictures emerged across social media platforms and YouTube, during and after the World Cup.[13]

The day after India's defeat to Australia in the semi-final, there were reports of a large number of Pakistani and Bangladeshi fans calling up BCCI's headquarters and mockingly singing "Mauka mauka! Kya hua mauke ka?" (What happened to the opportunity?), forcing BCCI to disconnect the lines.[26] Pakistani cricketer Shahid Afridi also sang the jingle on a TV show after India's World Cup exit.[27]

The whole ad campaign garnered more than 30 million views across the world. Forbes Magazine listed it amongst the 5 Best Sports Marketing Campaigns That Went Viral In 2015.[28]

In 2017, following Pakistan's victory over India in the Champions Trophy final, Sarfraz Ahmed sang Mauka Mauka during victory celebrations outside his home in Karachi.[29][30] An advert called No issue, lelo tissue, seen as a response to Mauka Mauka, was reportedly aired across several Pakistani TV channels after the match.[31][32]

• India–Pakistan cricket rivalry

• Mauka Mauka (India vs Pakistan) on YouTube