Aakash Chopra’s IPL commentary in 7 Indian languages leaves fans clean bowled!

Indian cricketers certainly carry the gift of the gab. And we’re not talking about Virender Sehwag’s quirks and humour here. Cricketer-turned-commentator Aakash Chopra is another former India player who hits fours and sixes with his verbal wit. Chopra’s #AakashVani on microblogging platform Koo has been unleashing its aggressive predictions through polls on cricketing action ever since the start of the 2021 season of the ongoing IPL.

What’s interesting is that Chopra is connecting and communicating with fans not just in English and Hindi, but also in Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi and Tamil! Followers from across India are now consuming Chopra’s sharp wit, his live match commentary and his anecdotes in their mother tongue, thus gaining an immersive cricketing experience on social media in a language of their choice. Recently, Chopra created a poll – will Kolkata be able to qualify for the playoffs – which went viral across the seven languages and received an overwhelming response from Koosters who chose to reply in their native tongue. By leveraging the platform’s multi-language features – which auto translate a post into multiple Indian languages real-time, Chopra, who Koos through the handle @cricketaakash, has been gaining in significant traction. The former cricketer now has over two lakh followers in a short span of time.

A classical opener, Chopra represented India in Test and ODIs during 2003-04 and featured in several strong first-wicket partnerships alongside Virender Sehwag. The duo had two century opening partnerships in Melbourne and Sydney respectively. Chopra is one of those rare Indian cricketers who has scored over 8,000 First-Class runs. After his cricketing career, Chopra turned critic, commentator and author with several Harper Collins publications – Out of the Blue, The Insider: Decoding the craft of Cricket, Beyond the Blues: A Cricket Season Like No Other to his credit.