Away from the arc-lights, Dilip excelled at games like football, hockey, cricket and chess. Any move he made on the sets was as well thought out as the next step by Gary Kasparov. If Dilip participated in a film stars' cricket match, it was no byplay but a deadly serious business for the man.
At Mumbai's Brabourne Stadium in such a film stars' match, as Charitra hero Salim Durani came in to bat, the ovation was deafening. As Salim took his stance at the wicket, even as Amitabh Bachchan began bowling left-arm spin from an impressive height, Dilip Kumar moved to his carefully calculated position in the field -- on the long-on boundary!
As Salim Durani answered the crowd's clamour for a six with a skyscraper hit, Dilip Kumar fell back in style on the ropes. Being ultra-careful to keep both his feet planted inside the boundary-line even while falling back, then, judging the ball coming at him, Dilip stuck out his left hand to bring off a sensational one-handed catch. During the lunch break, Raj Kapoor made it a point to seek out Dilip and tell him: "Remember, they had come to watch Salim Durani bat, not to view Dilip Kumar catch!"
The same Raj Kapoor, in its first six years, could not break Dilip Kumar's near stranglehold on the Filmfare Best Actor award -- not even with Shree 420. The irony here lay in the fact that, after Devdas, it was Dev Anand who claimed the Best Actor statuette for Kala Pani (1958). Raj Kapoor had to wait another year to win the Filmfare for his showing in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anari (1959), opposite Nutan.
Nutan was the top heroine opposite whom we somehow never got to see Dilip Kumar. But Nutan's aunt, Nalini Jaywant, whom Dilip once identified as the sharpest of his leading ladies -- excelled opposite him in Ramesh Saigal's Shikast (1953).
In the picture: Dilip Kumar in Naya Daur
Also Read: Classics Revisited: Naya Daur
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