The eleventh edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is going to start from April 7 in Mumbai. After enjoying this cash-rich tournament on SONY television for an entire decade, Indian cricket fans have to now switch to STAR to watch India’s biggest tamasha. If you are not subscribing to the channel already, now is the time to call your operator.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has also listed around 100 commentators for the upcoming season. This time, the commentary will be done in six different languages and for the same, a big pool of current and former cricketers have been roped in.
Starting with the English language, there will be Harsha Bhogle, Simon Doull, Pommie Mbangwa, Murali Kartik, Michael Vaughan, Ian Bishop, David Lloyd, Sanjay Manjrekar, Danny Morrison, Michael Slater, Brett Lee, Graeme Smith, Matthew Hayden, Sunil Gavaskar, Mel Jones, Kevin Pietersen, Michael Clarke, Lisa Carprini Sthalekar, Isa Guha, Nasser Hussain and Rohan Gavaskar in the commenatry panel.
Simon Doull, Mathew Hayden, Kevin Pietersen and Scott Styris/ Photo: Twitter
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In the Bengali commentary box, the Indian cricket board has inducted Ranadeb Ranjit Bose, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Saradindu Mukherjee, G. Bhattacharya, P. Roy, Sourav Ganguly. Apart from these names, Ashoke Dinda, who remained unsold in the IPL 2018 mega auction, has also been included.
Sourav Ganguly In Bengali Commentary Panel For IPL 2018/ Photo: Star
The Kannada version will be aired on Star Suvarna Plus channel. The commentary panel includes Sujith Somasundar, Akhil Balachandra, Chandramouli Kanavi, GK Anil Kumar, Sunil Joshi, Vijay Bharadwaj, Gundappa Vishwanath and Srinivas Murthy.
Then come the languages Tamil and Telugu. In the Telugu panel, there will be Venkatapathi Raju, Kalyan Krishna, C Venkatesh, Chandrasekhar and P Sudheer Mahavadi and Venugopal Rao. Their commentary will be done for Star Maa Movies.
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The Tamil commentators are Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, VB Chandrasekhar, Subramaniam Badrinath, Hemang Badani, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Abhinav Mukund, K V Sathyanarayanan.
The Hindi commentary box will have some more familiar faces. Former cricketers with the likes of Aakash Chopra, Vivek Razdan, Nikhil Chopra, Jatin Sapru, VVS Laxman, Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Mohammad Kaif, Kartik Murali, RP Singh, Abhishek Nayar1. Player like Pragyan Ojha, Rajat Bhatia and Irfan Pathan will join them who also remained unsold in the IPL auctions.
Apart from this big 6 languages, there will be one more team of 24 commentators who will work in other languages as well. Out of those 24, there are 8 Indians while 16 others are from overseas.
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Here’s the list of those 24:
India: Sunil Gavaskar, Sanjay Manjrekar, Murali Kartik, Harsha Bhogle, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, Rohan Gavaskar, Deep Das Gupta & Anjum Chopra
Australia: Michael Slater, Brett Lee, Matthew Hayden, Michael Clarke, Lisa Sthalekar, Melanie Jones
The Old IPL Commentary Team/ Photo: Twitter
England: Michael Vaughn, David Lloyd, Kevin Pietersen, Nasser Hussain, Isha Guha
Zimbabwe: Mpumelelo Mbangwa
New Zealand: Simon Doull, Danny Morison
South Africa: Greame Smith
West Indies Ian Bishop
On April 7, the home team, Mumbai Indians, will host the Chennai Super Kings for the opening match will be played after the conclusion of the opening ceremony.
