ICC World Cup 2019: Commentary squad revealed, India have three faces

He had penned after Australia made the final of the 2003 World Cup: “England and New Zealand had them in the coffin but couldn’t find the nails.” That was Mark Nicholas, one of the best-known commentators cricket has seen. On Thursday, the official account of the ICC Cricket World Cup revealed the names of all commentators who will do the job during the 46-day event and the squad has three Indians.

Harsha Bhogle and former India cricketers Sourav Ganguly and Sanjay Manjrekar are among the team of 24 commentators for the upcoming tournament. It also has former Australian World Cup-winning captain Michael Clarke and Michael Slater besides two Pakistanis in Wasim Akram and Rameez Raja. One from Sri Lanka (Kumar Sangakkara), Zimbabwe (Pommie Mbangwa) and Bangladesh (Athar Ali Khan) are also there.

The squad also has three women – former England cricketer Isha Guha, former Australia cricketer Mel Jones and English commentator Alison Mitchell. May 30 will see the launch of the ICC World Cup at the Kennington Oval where hosts England will take on four-time semi-finalists South Africa. The second game will see former champions Pakistan and West Indies locking horns at Trent Bridge. India will kick off their campaign on June 5 when they will meet South Africa in Southampton.

The commentary squad also has a couple of West Indians in Michael Holding and Ian Bishop and former England male cricketers like Michael Atherton, Nasser Hussain and Ian Ward. New Zealand are represented in the group by former cricketers Simon Doull, Ian Smith and Brendon McCullum. Former South Africa captains Graeme Smith and Shaun Pollock are also present in the unit.

Star Sports will broadcast the games in India and it has confirmed that it will telecast all 10 warm-up games as well between May 24 and 28.

Team India will be led in the tournament by Virat Kohli who is the seventh captain to lead the Men in Blue in a World Cup after Srinivas Venkataraghavan, Kapil Dev, Mohammad Azharuddin, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Mahendra Singh Dhoni. They have won the tournament twice in 1983 and 2011.

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