A mammoth 100 member strong commentary panel assigned for IPL 2018

The upcoming season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) promises to reach the epitome of grandeur and will witness a plethora of changes in the new decade. And in a first for the cash-rich league, the IPL will be broadcast under the banner of Star Sports. Star is on a record creating spree for the IPL ever since the 21st Century Fox-owned broadcaster had acquired the absolute broadcast rights for the biggest professional league in cricket for ₹16,347.5 crore.

And for the mega-event, a 100-member strong commentary panel has been engaged for the live broadcast, which will be covered in six languages. There will be 24 commentators for the world feed amongst which, four will be former international women cricketers. They are Lisa Sthalekar, Melanie Jones, Anjum Chopra, Isa Guha. Harsha Bhogle will be the only non-cricketer in the 24-strong panel for the IPL world feed.

The original list also included Jonty Rhodes, but the former South African batsman has opted out from the commentary panel. The world feed commentary has no names from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The regional language commentary team will be a mix of cricketers and non-cricketers. The broadcaster has scheduled a dinner-cum-workshop for the IPL commentary team early next week. Star Sports is targeting over 700 million viewers and will broadcast the IPL over 10 network channels in six languages along with the digital simulcast on its VOD platform Hotstar.

According to Insidesports, a source privy to the developments revealed, “Star India had a couple of weeks back conducted a commentators workshop in Mumbai. Several well established, non-cricketer names, who 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.”

Complete world feed panel for IPL 2018

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).

Little known facts about the IPL:

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