After a year’s absence, Cricket pundit Harsha Bhogle to make a return to commentary for the IPL – essentiallysports.com

A year after a stand-off with the BCCI, cricket commentator and journalist Harsha Bhogle will return to commentate for the 2017 Indian Premier League season. Prasana Krishnan, Business Head of Sony Pictures Networks India said that it was their intention to bring him back to the studio, but they still had some paperwork to deal with and some formalities to go through. But Krishnan remains confident that Bhogle will be a part of the IPL commentating team.

Bhogle had been sacked allegedly because some senior Indian cricket team players were unhappy about his comments during the ICC World T20. Other sources say that a tweet from actor Amitabh Bachchan which raised issues with the former’s criticisms of the Indian Cricket team. Former captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni also retweeted Bachchan’s tweet and soon a formal complaint was lodged by Virat Kohli and Murali Vijay to the BCCI. As a result, he was sacked by the BCCI and removed from the commentary team during the later stages of the 2016 IPL season. Bhogle alleged that his dismissal was done without any clear reason and he was not informed. All he knew that it was a BCCI management decision.

Bachchan’s tweet read “With all due respects, it would be really worthy of an Indian commentator to speak more about our players than others all the time”. Bhogle’s return became a possibility due to a change in administration in the BCCI. Bhogle was last seen doing cricket analysis for a sports website following his ouster. Another factor for Bhogle’s return is the unavailability of Ramiz Raja, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar. Bhogle will not be present on the pitch however, instead he will be in the studio for the pre-show and post show IPL Extra Innings.