DUBAI: The International Cricket Council Thursday announced a stellar line up of commentators for the upcoming World Cup in England and Wales, along with detailed broadcast plans that will bring more than a billion fans closer to the action and players than ever before.
Three Indian names feature in the commentary panel, including former cricketers Sanjay Manjrekar, Sourav Ganguly and writer/commentator Harsha Bhogle.
The last man to lift the Cricket World Cup, Michael Clarke, will be making his ICC TV commentary debut alongside some of the game’s most respected broadcasters including Nasser Hussain, Ian Bishop, Melanie Jones, Kumar Sangakkara, Michael Atherton, Alison Mitchell, Brendon McCullum, Graeme Smith and Wasim Akram.
Other big names who will commentate through the tournament include Shaun Pollock, Michael Slater, Mark Nicholas, Michael Holding, Isa Guha, Pommie Mbangwa, Simon Doull, Ian Smith, Ramiz Raja, Athar Ali Khan and Ian Ward.
Meanwhile, the World Cup winners will earn a cash award of $4 million, the highest prize money on offer in the history of the tournament.
The total prize pot of $10 million will see the runners-up take home $2 million and the losing semifinalists $800,000 each at the end of the 46-day tournament being played across 11 venues in the United Kingdom from May 30.
ICC TV will produce live coverage of all 48 matches being played over 46 days, as well as full live coverage of all ten warm-up matches for the first time.
Viewers will be treated to state-of-the-art coverage which will include a minimum of 32 cameras at every game, including eight ultra-motion Hawk-Eye cameras, front and reverse view stump cameras and Spidercam.
For the first time at a World Cup, the broadcast will produce 360° replays, provided by Piero which allows multiple camera feeds to be stitched together to create video that helps provide in-depth analysis of big moments in the game.
The coverage will also be complemented with a variety of analytical and visual enhancements including the use of Player Tracking. Broadcast tools such as Hawk-Eye will be supplemented by an in-depth cricket data analytics system to be provided by analytics app CricViz.
The drone camera provided by Batcam will also provide stunning visuals of all venues across England and Wales. There will be a roving Buggy Cam as well, for a ground level view of proceedings.
ICC TV is supported by production services partner Sunset+Vine and equipment services partner NEP Broadcast Solutions. Whilst sports graphics specialists Alston Elliott have developed a contemporary-styled graphics package to visualize the ever-crucial scores and statistics throughout the coverage.
Aarti Dabas, head of Media Rights, Broadcast and Digital, said: “I am excited to welcome such a talented team of broadcasters to ICC TV, they will bring to life the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup for more than a billion fans around the world.
“Our focus for this event has been on bringing fans closer to cricket than ever before and our comprehensive host broadcast plan delivers this. Fans can enjoy unique insights from our commentators supplemented by unprecedented analytics focus making this the most engaging World Cup broadcast production to date.”
ICC TV has also made arrangements to produce a host of additional content off the field of play, to be distributed to its broadcast partners and other media rights partners via the ICC TV Content Delivery Service. This content will include daily player profiles, team features, match previews, venue features and other behind the scenes content, getting fans up close and personal with all the action around the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.
