Harsha Bhogle Joined Colors Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa 2012 (Season 5)

Harsha Bhogle (Marathi: हर्ष भोगले) (born 19 July 1961) is an Indian cricket commentator and journalist. He was born in a Marathi speaking family in Hyderabad.

Early life

Harsha Bhogle is the son of A. D. Bhogle, a professor of French, and Shalini Bhogle, a professor of psychology. He went to Hyderabad Public School, then studied chemical engineering at Osmania University in Hyderabad and later at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. After graduation, he joined an advertising agency and worked there for two years before moving on to another two year stint in a sports management company.

[edit] Career

Bhogle began his career as a commentator at the age of 19 with All India Radio, while living in Hyderabad. In 1991-92, he became the first Indian commentator to be invited by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation during India's cricket series before the 1992 Cricket World Cup. He has since worked for ABC Radio Grandstand during India's Australian tours, and for eight years worked for the BBC as part of their commentary team in the 1996 and the 1999 Cricket World Cups.

Since 1995, he has been presenting live cricket from all around the world for ESPN STAR Sports and was part of the 'Few Good Men' commentary team that included Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, and Alan Wilkins along with Geoff Boycott and Navjot Singh Sidhu, for few seasons, and later, Ian Chappell and Sanjay Manjrekar.

He is covering the 2011-'12 series in Australia solely for ABC Radio - the first time in a decade he has not been part of an ESPN Star broadcast.

Harsha has been covering all Indian Premier League seasons since 2009 and is an expert cricket analyst on CNN-IBN.

He has hosted television programs such as Harsha Online, Harsha Unplugged and School Quiz Olympiad for ESPN and Star Sports.

Harsha even had a Television programme named after him, "Harsha ki khoj"/"Hunt by Harsha", that strived to find broadcasting talent in India.

Bhogle was recently voted the favourite TV cricket commentator by Cricinfo users based on a worldwide poll. Bhogle has also anchored BBC's travel serial Travel India and Business Today Acumen Business Quiz and Debate competitions.

Bhogle was the advisor to the Mumbai Indians for the 2008 IPL.

Bhogle has published and authored a number of books, including a biography of Mohammad Azharuddin and a collection of columns in The Indian Express, Out of the Box - Watching the Game We Love and is also a columnist for the Chennai based "The Sportstar" a subsidiary of The Hindu group of Publications under the title "Hitting Hard" by Bhogle. (2009). Bhogle has presented the program TRAVEL INDIA WITH HARSHA BHOGLE on the Discovery channel and TLC.

Bhogle has recently become a freelance TV presenter, not being employed with any one channel. In the 2011 World Cup held in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, he anchored the pre and post match shows that features Simon Hughes, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Sunil Gavaskar, Tony Greig and Sourav Ganguly.

Bhogle's presence in electronic media can be seen through his twitter account "bhogleharsha" and his weekly article on espncricinfo.

Personality

Harsha is a vegetarian. He has been a brand ambassador of PETA. Harsha is known to be a very modest person. Although quite technology savvy on the web, he still owns a old Nokia cell phone and travels in yellow cabs from the airport to his home in Mumbai. Harsha is a cricket icon who follows his passions. He quotes,"Give your best performance and make the result irrelevant". He is regarded today as one of the best commentators, staying true to his father's golden words,"Give your best so that the God of Fortune asks you What do you want".

Books

He and his wife Anita Bhogle have written a book titled The winning way: Learning from Sport managers based on business knowledge drawn from the sporting world. This book is result of ten years of work and experience in sports based communication. His has also authored a biography of Mohammad Azharuddin. His collection of articles is published in a book called Out of the Box.

Other Work

Harsha, along with his wife, Anita (also a management graduate), runs a sport-based communication consultancy called Prosearch.

Family

Harsha is married to Anita, his classmate in IIM-A, and the couple live in Mumbai with their sons Chinmay and Satchit. Harsha's elder brother, Srinivas, is a statistician based in Bangalore.