The upcoming 11th season of Indian Premier League (IPL 2018) will see an army of 100 commentators. Due to extensive live coverage of this season, The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has, in collaboration with broadcaster Star Sports, zeroed in on the 100 commentators, most of whom are former players.
Star India acquired the global media rights of five seasons of IPL in September 2017, in a humongous deal of Rs 16, 348 crores, Star India has bigger plans to make the coming season of IPL reach to millions of people across the globe.
IPL 2018 will be broadcast in six languages, 10 channels and on the digital platform of Hotstar. Viewers will have an extra dosage of the details on the Star Sports Select this season. Apart from English and Hindi, IPL 2018 will be aired in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali. There will be six different feeds, each with localised packaging, commentary and pre/post-programming. Star’s over-the-top service on Hotstar will help the digital viewers to enjoy the match live, unlike the previous 5-minute delay.
There will be commentators in half-a-dozen languages and most are former players. Who the commentators are is not as important as how many of them are there.
said a BCCI official to MirrorNow.
The world feed will be one of the six feed. There were originally 25 commentators included in the world feed list but Jonty Rhodes has opted out of the world feed commentary panel it has now only 24 commentators.
The 24 commentators for the world feed include 8 Indians and 16 foreign commentators. World feed commentators include mostly cricketers and Harsha Bhogle will be the only non-cricketer.The world feed commentators also include four former international women cricketers – Lisa Sthalekar, Melanie Jones, Anjum Chopra, Isa Guha. BCCI in 2015 to included women cricketers in the commentary. The world feed commentary has no names from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
IPL 2018 Commentators (World Feed)
Sunil Gavaskar (India), Manjrekar (India), Murali Kartik (India), Harsha Bhogle (India), L Sivaramakrishnan (India), Rohan Gavaskar (India), Deep Das Gupta (India) and Anjum Chopra (India). Simon Doull (New Zealand), Danny Morison (New Zealand), Mpumelelo ‘Pommie’ Mbangwa (Zimbabwe), Michael Slater (Australia), Brett Lee (Australia), Matthew Hayden (Australia), Michael Clarke (Australia), Lisa Sthalekar (Australia), Melanie Jones (Australia), Michael Vaughn (England), David Lloyd (England) Kevin Pietersen (England), Nasser Hussain (England), Isha Guha (England), Greame Smith (South Africa) and Ian Bishop (West Indies).
The regional Commentatory team will include both cricketers and non-cricketers.
Star India had a couple of weeks back conducted a commentator’s workshop in Mumbai. Several well established, non-cricketer names, which have over the year become the voices of non-cricket leagues in India, were also called for the workshop. But, the Star TV management had later decided to have only Bhogle as the non-cricketer commentator for the World Feed,
a source said to InsideSport.
