The Indian Premier League is finally back with the defending champions Mumbai Indians playing against Royal Challengers Bangalore in the opener match on 9th April 2021. Loads of changes have been affected since Covid-19 was declared a pandemic in India and beyond. For instance, no team will play a match in their home ground in IPL 2021 to ensure minimal travel.
Fans are always looking forward to knowing the commentators. Star Network, the host broadcaster, has been known to feature some of the best commentators that the cricket world has ever seen. The team will deliver IPL commentary in 8 different languages.
The analytical panel will include some former cricketers such as Brian Lara, Scott Styris, Brett Lee, Dominic Cork, and Graeme Swann. This is an interesting panel for online sports betting fans interested in betting on the various IPL games this season.
According to Sanjog Gupta, Head of Sports, Star and Disney India, the commentary team is made up of cricket experts across different languages who amplify the excitement of the game and keep the fans engaged. In his words, “we believe that physical boundaries no longer constrain the commentary box. Experts from different parts of the world can now log in and contribute to live commentary, bringing games to life, all courtesy of modern technology. This approach has allowed us to bring together one of the best panels for the IPL despite travel and movement restrictions imposed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
The following are some of the big names that will feature as commentators during IPL 2021:
English commentators for IPL 2021 (World Feed)
Table of Contents
Michael Slater, Deep Dasgupta, Ian Bishop, Mpumelelo Mbangwa, Rohan Gavaskar, Lisa Sthalekar, Mark Nicholas, Daren Ganga, Mel Jones, Alan Wilkins, Harsha Bhogle, Anjum Chopra, Ajit Agarkar, Simon Doull, Murli Kartik, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, Danny Morrisson, Kevin Pietersen, Matthew Hayden, Sunil Gavaskar, and Nick Knight.
Star Sports Dugout commentators for IPL 2021
Brett Lee, Brian Lara, Graeme Swann, Dominic Cork, and Scott Styris.
Star Sports Dugout special guests
Nasser Hussain, Shane Watson, Kevin Pietersen, Ross Taylor, and Dale Steyn.
IPL 2021 Hindi commentators
Aakash Chopra, Parthiv Patel, Gautam Gambhir, Ajit Agarkar, Irfan Pathan, RP Singh, Sunil Gavaskar, Nikhil Chopra, and Deep Dasgupta.
IPL 2021 Tamil commentators
Hemang Badani, Yo Mahesh, Abhinav Mukund, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, Russel Arnold, K V Sathyanarayanan, Sadagopan Ramesh, Krishnamachari Srikanth, Muthuraman R, Subramaniam Badrinath, RJ Balaji and Radhakrishnan Sreenivasan.
IPL 2021 Malayalam commentators
CM Deepak, Shiyas Mohammed, Sony Cheruvathur, Reiphi Gomez, Tinu Yohannan and Vishnu Hariharan.
IPL 2021 Telugu commentators
Kalyan Krishna, Venugopal Rao, MSK Prasad, Ashish Reddy, Sashikant Avulapalli, and Kaushik NC.
IPL 2021 Kannada commentators
GK Anil Kumar, Venkatesh Prasad, Bharat Chipli, Vijay Bharadwaj, Akhil Balachandra, Vinay Kumar, and Srinivasa Murthy.
IPL 2021 Marathi commentators
Vinod Kambli, Chaitanya Sant, Sandeep Patil, Snehal Pradhan, Kunal Date, Amol Muzumdar and Prasanna Sant.
IPL 2021 Bengali commentators
Saradindu Mukherjee, Ranadeb Bose, Boria Majumdar, Joydeep Mukherjee, Sanjeeb Mukherjea, Gautam Bhattacharya, Debashish Datta, and Laxmi Ratan Shukla.
Is the commentary any different from 2020?
2020 was a defining moment for the world of sports and other industries. The league was scheduled to start on 29th March 2020 but was officially suspended on 16th April 2020. What followed was a challenging period where different experts were consulting widely on containing the coronavirus’s spread and still saving the economy.
It was not until 9th September 2020 that IPL 2020 resumed amid various new measures that were put in place. The league was held in UAE, and the games were played with no fans. The IPL 2020 commentary was done in four languages; Tamil, Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu.
No fans will be allowed during the IPL 2021 after expert consultations from various sectors. Covid-19 cases are on the rise, and BCCI has thus come up with several measures to ensure that all participants are safe during the entire tournament.
BCCI has created a 50-page document that stipulates what should happen on the field. For instance, if there is a case where a player comes into contact with a fan, then the player will have to change clothes. The fan will then be removed from the field by security guards, and the contaminated clothes stored in a different bag for disinfection.
