Comedy and cricket: IPL's new formula is bowling over fans already

The 4th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has finally hit the cricket ground after it was indefinitely suspended in May due to the rising cases of Covid-19 in the country.

The IPL season that initially began in April this year, was left midway with nearly half of its matches left to be played. The remaining schedule of the games, which began on September 19 in the United Arab Emirates, will be hopefully followed through by mid-October.

To revive the dampened spirit of the cricket-entertainment series and bring back the bounce in the game-watching, OTT platform Disney Hotstar has thought of a quirky way that is already bowling over fans. 

The platform has launched an exclusive commentary feed titled Hotstar Dosts with a line up of some of the country's better-known comedians and entertainers including Zakir Khan, Varun Sharma, Abhishek Upmanyu, Anubhav Singh Bassi, Amit Bhadana, Amit Tandon, Harsh Gujral, Angad Singh Ranyal, Vrajesh Hirjee amongst others.

Author and screenwriter Durjoy Dutta took to his Twitter account to share his excitement. "Kya matlab I can listen to cool people casually discuss cricket live during IPL? This #HotstarDostsfeature on@DisneyPlusHS is solid! Dil khush kar diya yaar."

Bringing together India's two favourite entertainment packs into one is a unique idea working in favour of both cricket and comedy fans. While some mentioned being pulled to the IPL season only because their favourite Zakir Khan was going to be talking cricket and cracking up on the same platform, others lamented that this form of commentary is way better than what IPL fans have been fed all this while. 

Viewers would be able to access the exclusive Hotstar Dosts commentary feed from the audio settings tab on the Disney+ Hotstar interface. The feed will be available in the English+Hindi language and is currently planned for all evening matches.