Mumbai: India’s public broadcaster Doordarshan (DD) Network will be telecasting the limited overs edition of the India tour of the West Indies on multiple languages and seven different channels. This bouquet of channels includes all the platforms of DD National and DD Sports. DD Sports will be telecasting the series with commentary in English and Hindi and DD National with commentary in Hindi and Bhojpuri. DD Podhigai will telecast the series with Tamil commentary, DD Saptagiri and DD Yadagiri with Telugu commentary, DD Bangla with Bengali commentary and DD Chandana with Kannada commentary. The ODI series will start on 27 July, followed by T20I series on 3 August.
The T20I series will also see young guns like Tilak Varma and Yashasvi Jaiswal making their series debut. All the matches will start at either 7 PM or 8 PM, to suit Indian audiences.
This move by DD will give the matches an unprecedented reach and availability across all households with a television, making it the most extensive and widest coverage on free-to-air TV.
Speaking about it, Prasar Bharati CEO Gaurav Dwivedi said “Cricket is loved across the country and we are delighted that through our large free-to-air network, we will be able to bring the action LIVE to each and every household in their preferred language. With addition of DD National, which is the oldest and most widely available television channel in India, I am confident to say that this is the maximum reach & distribution for any bilateral Indian cricket match in recent memory .”
The channels that will be telecasting the matches in the following languages respectively are as follows:
1. DD National - Hindi & Bhojpuri language commentary
2. DD Sports - English and Hindi language commentary
3. DD Podhigai - Tamil language commentary
4. DD Chandana - Kannada language commentary
5. DD Saptagiri - Telugu language commentary
6. DD Yadagiri - Telugu language commentary
7. DD Bangla - Bangla language commentary