What do they do?
Just loving the game is not enough. You should know the game through and through, with names of cricketers (past + present), milestone matches, debacle matches, teams etc. Many retired cricketers take being commentators and are usually a huge hit, but there are popular and immensely successful commentators without a cricketing background like Harsh Bhogale & Charu Sharma.
Sitting in front of the camera, what matters is the way you present the match. And who better to draw inspiration from other than the famous Harsha Bhogale, India’s most successful cricket commentator.
Harsha works for ESPN STAR Sports and is a Chemical Engineer and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad. He has worked with advertising agencies for various prestigious companies like Colgate, Halo shampoo, Palmolive and Charmis.
He began his commenting career at the early age of 19 for All India Radio. In 1991-92, he became the first Indian commentator to be invited by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation during India's cricket series before the 1992 Cricket World Cup. Since then, he has worked for ABC Radio Grandstand during India's Australian tours. Besides this, he has done assignments for the BBC and was also part of their commentary team in the 1996 and the 1999 Cricket World Cups.
Since 1995, he has been presenting live cricket from all around the world for ESPN STAR Sports. He has covered more than 80 Test Matches and almost 300 One Day Internationals. He has also covered the second season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) in April/May 2009.
He has also hosted several television programs such as Harsha Online, Harsha Unplugged and School Quiz Olympiad for ESPN and Star Sports. Harsha is Indian cricket's first non-player celebrity and also appears in several TV and print commercials. In addition, Harsha was the advisor to the Mumbai Indians for the 2008 IPL.
He has also penned down two books titled, Azhar – The Authorized Biography of Mohammad Azharuddin and Harsha: Out of the Box - Watching the Game We Love.
