Ashish Ranjan
The International Cricket Council has announced the broadcast licensee arrangements and commentary panel for the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) 2023 Final, which will be played between Australia and India from June 7-11 at The Oval.
The final of the second edition of the championship, which ran from 2021 to 2023, will be broadcast globally to a potential audience of 700 million people across 100 territories via ICC’s official broadcast licensees, as well as additional coverage on icc.tv to reach a truly global audience.
In India, Star Sports will broadcast the English World Feed and provide coverage in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, and Telugu. Their digital platform, Disney+ Hotstar, will broadcast live coverage of every game. The DD Sports channel of India’s public broadcaster Doordarshan will also provide live coverage of each day’s action.
The Test will be broadcast live in Australia on Channel 7 and its digital platform 7Plus, with pitch-side studio analysis.
Sky Sports will provide live coverage of the event in the United Kingdom via their Sky Sports Cricket channel, which is also accessible via subscription via the Sky Go app and NOW. Supersport will provide complete coverage of the match on their linear network in Sub-Saharan Africa and via the DSTV app.
Sky Sports will broadcast the match in New Zealand via their linear channels and the Sky Go application. Cricket enthusiasts in the United States and Canada will be able to watch the action on both linear and digital Willow TV platforms.
Fans in the UAE will be able to witness the Test on CricLife on Etisalat and Starzplay, while those in the Caribbean will have access to Sportsmax. ATN in Afghanistan, Gazi TV in Bangladesh, and Maharaja TV in Sri Lanka are additional broadcasters.
ICC.tv, the ICC’s in-house digital platform, will provide global live coverage of the Ultimate Test in all other markets.
BBC Test Match Special will provide live audio coverage direct from the venue to a UK audience, while SEN will broadcast live to Australia and New Zealand. Several additional radio stations will broadcast live, as detailed here.
Non-live coverage is available on the ICC’s Facebook and Instagram channels, which will feature in-play clips and highlights segments from the Indian subcontinent as well as five-minute global highlights.
BBC Sport will also provide coverage in the host nation via short-form in-play and highlight segments.
Production details:
ICC TV will broadcast the WTC Final live with industry-leading production enhancements. There will be a completely produced live match day program with a 30-minute pre-matchday buildup, lunch and tea interval shows, and a post-matchday wrap-up for broadcasters.
The commentary panel for The Ultimate Test will consist of cricket legends Ravi Shastri, Ricky Ponting, Sunil Gavaskar, Matthew Hayden, Nasser Hussain, and Kumar Sangakkara, along with veteran broadcasters Harsha Bhogle and Alison Mitchell, Dinesh Karthik, and Justin Langer.
The production services partner Sunset+Vine and the equipment services partner NEP Broadcast Solutions support ICC TV. AE Live will provide the coverage’s on-air graphics.
A minimum of 35 cameras will be used to provide cutting-edge coverage to the audience. Numerous analytic and graphical enhancements will be added to the coverage.Hawk-Eye will also provide an extensive selection of DRS services, such as ball tracking and edge detection. Cricviz will provide in-depth cricket data analytics to supplement the graphics system.
Batcam’s drone camera will provide breathtaking views of the venue and its environs. In addition, a Batcam vehicle cam will provide a roving ground-level perspective, whereas Spidercam will provide an aerial perspective of the performance.
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Field 360°, a virtual field model powered by an AI-enabled live player tracking engine, will be used to emphasize fielding positions and strategies. It will be provided by Quidich Innovation Labs under the creative direction of ICC TV.
Additionally, ICC TV will generate a variety of additional content that will be distributed to its media rights partners via the ICC TV content delivery service. This content will feature player profiles, team features, match previews, venue features, and other behind-the-scenes content, bringing viewers closer to all of The Ultimate Test’s action.
ICC Digital:
The tournament has a dedicated website, worldtestchampionship.com, which will provide supporters with all exclusive content related to the event.In addition to match clips, daily highlights (in Hindi), and behind-the-scenes player content, dedicated mobile applications for iOS and Android will also feature vertical videos.
Through the VR ShotTracker experience, users can view a 360-degree replay of every six plays exclusively on the app. To enhance the spectator experience, custom in-stadium activations such as live polling and quizzes will be implemented.
