Mumbai, Nov 16 (IANS): Cinema and cricket are India’s biggest obsessions. The two often are found at crossroads as a lot of current and former members of team India are the spouses to Bollywood actresses. But, what happens when cinema and cricket are pitted against each other?

The recently held World Cup semi-final between the Indian squad and New Zealand somewhat solves this conundrum as the match fell concurrent to one of Bollywood’s biggest superstars Salman Khan’s film’s theatrical run.

Salman’s ‘Tiger 3’, which also stars Katrina Kaif, debuted in theatres on Sunday on the occasion of Diwali on the day when India, after solidifying its spot in the semi-final took on Netherlands in a match which was a formality. The film was off to a flying start as it collected Rs. 44.5 crore net across India in all languages on Day 1, as per industry tracker Sacnilk.

Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, Executive Director, PVR INOX Limited told IANS: “As anticipated, Tiger-3 released on Diwali day surpassed our expectations with a net box office collection (India box office) of Rs. 44.5 crore on the opening day with its multi-lingual release in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, setting a new record for Diwali releases. With a new weekend (Sunday-Thursday), the movie picked up momentum with huge word of mouth promotion and extensive marketing with the audience visiting theatres in huge numbers to see Tiger 3 from the YRF Spy Universe. The holidays that followed Diwali during the week aided the huge rush of family audiences.”

The film, which sees a good performance by Salman, even witnessed a 33.15 per cent jump in its collections on Day 2, and raked in Rs. 59.25 crore net across India.

However, it witnessed a slump in its collections on Tuesday because of the fractured Diwali holiday collecting Rs. 44.3 crore on Day 3.

But the big drop came on Day 4 as the collections plummeted by 52.37 per cent coming to Rs. 44.3 crore.

The contest between Team India and New Zealand was a crucial one being the knockout. What made it even more interesting was Virat Kohli’s 50th century and Mohammed Shami’s ground-breaking performance of seven wickets as he crippled New Zealand’s chase. At one point, the streaming platform playing the match clocked over five crore live viewers.

Karan Taurani of Elara Capital told IANS: “The box office is impacted only on the on the day of India matches for certain shows but, the point is that if the content is compelling then the collections do come in the next few days. If the content is good, the film makes a recovery at the box-office in the following days.”

The World Cup match being free and everyone having smartphones in their pockets made the match an obvious choice for a vast section of audience as it got divided between the film playing in theatres and the match available on their smartphones.

As the match gained momentum, the occupancy rates for the film witnessed a sharp fall on Wednesday with the night occupancy of ‘Tiger 3’ in theatres coming down to 20.97 per cent compared to 41.36 per cent on Tuesday, as per Sacnilk.

While ‘Tiger 3’ now boasts of highest Monday collections for a Hindi film, the film might fall a bit short compared to other release of the spy universe - the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer ‘Pathaan’ and SRK’s another action thriller ‘Jawan’.

Talking about how the movie is faring at the box-office, Karan said: “The response for ‘Tiger 3’ in terms of the box office and the reviews have been mixed. So, we anyway don't expect the collections of ‘Tiger 3’ to move closer to the collections of ‘Pathaan’ or ‘Jawan’”.

“Lifetime box office collections of ‘Tiger 3’ will be somewhere close to Rs 300 - 350 crores in terms of net box office revenue,” he added.