Ian Bishop, Tom Moody, Aaron Finch, Simon Katich, and Irfan Pathan are among the panellists who will be a part of the Star Sports panel for the upcoming IPL 2023 player auction, to be held in Kochi on Friday afternoon.
The network will broadcast the IPL 2023 player auction in five languages -- English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. Bishop, Moody, Finch and Katich, all of whom have been present in the IPL in broadcast, playing and coaching situations, will be present for the English feed along with Mayanti Langer.
Pathan, the former India left-arm pacer who had played for six IPL teams in his playing career, will be giving his views on auction strategies and player recruitment in the Hindi feed alongside Aakash Chopra, and Amol Mazumdar with Jatin Sapru for company.
"This year's auction panellists on Star Sports have been handpicked to provide the best insights to our viewers. These are some of the most proficient experts in the cricket domain, with years of experience not only on the field and team management but are also technically sound in auction strategies and tactics."
"Our English language feed boasts of names like Ian Bishop, who is arguably among the creme de la creme in the cricket world with an indelible profile that speaks volumes of his stature."
"Tom Moody and Simon Katich, who were crucial members during the auction strategy of various IPL teams and Aaron Finch, one of the most decorated cricketers in Australia, who has represented a record nine IPL franchises in his career," said a Star Sports spokesperson in an official release.
The Tamil feed will feature Lakshmipathy Balaji, Sadagoppan Ramesh and Subramaniam Badrinath while the Telugu feed will have Venugopal Rao, MSK Prasad and Ashish Reddy. The Kannada feed will feature Vijay Bharadwaj, Srinivas Murthy & Balachandra Akhil.
"For our regional feeds, we have MSK Prasad, who brings with him years of valuable experience as the former Chief Selector of the Indian National Team, L Balaji, who was one of India's leading spearhead in his time and began his career in coaching with Chennai Super Kings, and Irfan Pathan, who has been the mentor-cum-coach of Jammu & Kashmir cricket team which has the maximum representation in this year's auctions."
"Cumulatively, these legends of the game will be able to thoroughly analyze every auction strategy that franchises adopt and provide fans a well-informed view of how their favourite team fared at the auction," added the Star Sports spokesperson.
Earlier this year, Star India retained TV Rights for the IPL seasons 2023-2027 in the Indian subcontinent for INR 23,575 crore. They have been holders of IPL TV rights since the 2017-22 cycle. At that time, their winning bid of INR 16,347.50 crore was for both TV and digital in September 2017.