Team FC
The film was filmed in Kutch, an area selected after an extensive search for land that looked both agricultural and dry.
Rachel Shelley, who played Elizabeth, had to also prove she could emote while singing, since this was a film in which she would have to participate in a song-and-dance number.
Apart from Aamir, none of the other actors had performed a lip-sync song before. The first number to be shot was 'Ghanan Ghanan', the group song at the beginning of the film.
Eight-six-year-old AK Hangal, who played the village elder, slipped and fell in the bathroom about three weeks into the shoot. Gowariker suggested he go back to Mumbai, but Hangal, a veteran of the Hindi screen, wouldn't hear of it.
The shooting of the climactic cricket match posed many problems. The Indian actors were unfamiliar with cricket – which was how Gowariker had wanted it when he cast them, so that they looked as raw as their characters, but it also meant that getting the right shots took frustratingly long.