Ahead of the Indian Premier League’s 14th season, official broadcasters Star Sports announced the list of commentators and presenters for nine concurrent live feeds that will be aired from 9 April to 30 May.
Commentary will be delivered in eight languages while the Select Dugout also returns. Former cricketers Scott Styris, Brian Lara, Brett Lee, Graeme Swann, and Dominic Cork will be part of the analytical panel. The likes of Shane Watson, Dale Steyn, Ross Taylor, Graeme Smith, Kevin Pietersen among a host of other experts will join the feed, the broadcasters said.
“We have a rich pool of cricketing experts from across languages joining us this year to amplify the excitement of the match and engage fans,” Sanjog Gupta, Head of Sports, Star and Disney India said.
“We also believe that the commentary box is no longer restrained by physical boundaries. Today we have technology that allows experts from all over the world to log in, contribute to live commentary, and bring games to life. This has allowed us to put together arguably the best ever commentary panel for IPL despite restrictions in travel and movement imposed upon us due to the pandemic.”
The tournament starts in Chennai on Friday, with defending champions Mumbai Indians taking on Royal Challengers Bangalore. Matches, which will begin at 1930 IST, are being played in neutral venues this season. The event will be broadcast across the Star Sports network in India and streamed live on Disney+ Hotstar.
Here is the list of commentators and presenters as announced by broadcaster Star Sports:
World feed: Matthew Hayden, Kevin Pietersen, Michael Slater, Danny Morrisson, Ian Bishop, Harsha Bhogle, Simon Doull, Mpumelelo Mbangwa, Daren Ganga, Sunil Gavaskar, Mark Nicholas, Ajit Agarkar, Nick Knight, Deep Dasgupta, Rohan Gavaskar, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, Murli Kartik, Anjum Chopra, Lisa Sthalekar, Mel Jones and Alan Wilkins
Select Dugout: Scott Styris, Brett Lee, Dominic Cork, Brian Lara, Graeme Swann. Joining remotely for few matches as a guest: Kevin Pietersen, Shane Watson, Ross Taylor, Dale Steyn, Nasser Hussain
Hindi: Aakash Chopra, Nikhil Chopra, Gautam Gambhir, Ajit Agarkar, Irfan Pathan, Parthiv Patel, RP Singh, Deep Dasgupta, Sunil Gavaskar
Tamil: Abhinav Mukund, Subramaniam Badrinath, Hemang Badani, Yo Mahesh, Sadagopan Ramesh, Radhakrishnan Sreenivasan, Muthuraman R, K V Sathyanarayanan, RJ Balaji, Krishnamachari Srikanth, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan and Russel Arnold
Kannada: Venkatesh Prasad, GK Anil Kumar, Akhil Balachandra, Srinivasa Murthy, Bharat Chipli, Vijay Bharadwaj, Vinay Kumar
Telugu: Venugopal Rao, Ashish Reddy, MSK Prasad, Kaushik NC, Kalyan Krishna and Sashikant Avulapalli
Bengali: Ranadeb Bose, Joydeep Mukherjee, Boria Majumdar, Sanjeeb Mukherjea, Saradindu Mukherjee, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Gautam Bhattacharya and Debashish Datta
Marathi: Vinod Kambli, Sandeep Patil, Amol Muzumdar, Snehal Pradhan, Kunal Date, Prasanna Sant and Chaitanya Sant
Malayalam: Shiyas Mohammed, Vishnu Hariharan, CM Deepak, Sony Cheruvathur, Tinu Yohannan and Reiphi Gomez
Presenters across feeds: Jatin Sapru, Neroli Meadows, Sanjana Ganesan, Tanya Purohit, Anant Tyagi, Suren Sundaram, Dheeraj Juneja, Bhavna Balakrishnan, Nashpreet Kaur, Anubhav Jain, Radhakrishnan Sreenivasan, Muthuraman R, M Anand Srikrishna, Vindhya Medapatti, Neha Chowdry, Reena Dsouza, Kiran Srinivasa, Madhu Mailankody
Limited-time offer: Big stories, small price. Keep independent media alive. Become a Scroll member today!
Our journalism is for everyone. But you can get special privileges by buying an annual Scroll Membership. Sign up today!