He wakes up. Boards a plane. Lands. Runs into a packed cricket stadium, gripping a microphone. Gets the crowd going over wickets, sixes, fours and more. Goes to bed. And repeat. This is just the surface of what we assume an emcee does during sporting tournaments.
Sunny Khandewal is about to get on a plane to Chennai for the Chennai Super Kings match against the Mumbai Indians when we catch him. This season, he’s emceeing for Sunrisers Hyderabad and Mumbai Indians. Ask him about the professional demands he has to meet and he chuckles, “You’ve got to be mentally prepared, more than anything else — for the season. Earlier when I started emceeing for IPL it used to be a single team per season but now I work with multiple teams. Once you’re ready, everything falls into place.”
- Sunny shares that growing up, he wanted to become a cricket player, adding, “It is every boy’s dream. I would go watch many matches at my local stadium.”
- He shares he was fortunate to work on two seasons of the Indian Cricket League matches where he understood the format of a T20 game — this helps him have at least a five per cent advantage over the competition in emceeing. But he is grounded in understanding that what you end up doing on the field right now — whatever your experience — is what counts.
The city-based events pro shares there’s a circle of emcees with “a very good spirit and a healthy sense of competition.” They all analyse the number of crowd moves, such as the Mexican Wave, done in a certain time interval at a given match to break records from other emcees’ matches. “There are times we exchange ideas too, thanks to social media. In the long run, we understand exactly what’s happening or trending… and being audible during those games is helpful.”
Record-breaking is a fun bonus for the IPL emceeing community. “There’s a particular format in the stadium experience today,” starts Sunny, “which is, after the toss, the playing-11 would show on the big screen, both home and away teams. I integrated this into my routine because everything around you is a resource to get the crowd to back the teams. It becomes instinctive when you understand the pulse of every game and the timing. So when the headshots of the playing-11 come on, I would call out the names of the players which became infectious. Now that’s become an identified format in IPL.” Sunny adds his format has to be universally accessible too, because in a single stadium there’s an Ambani as well as a cab driver in the crowd. “I have to balance the masses and the classes.”
Big numbers
In a 45,000-packed Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium, Sunny is well-aware of the expectations he has to meet as an emcee, adding he has to energise the players too, much like an encouraging gym trainer. “A lot of the challenge comes into knowing whether, for example, Hardik Pandya or David Warner are going to hit a six at that very second — most of the time, when we incite a cheer, it falls in our favour. And there’s a strong belief across sports that the emcee is like the 12th player.” However, an emcee must not interfere in a game, he notes, leaving it to the heroes on the field to do their job and still have fun.
Sunrisers Hyderabad team supporters cheering the Vivo Indian Premier League (IPL) 2019 Twenty20 Championship cricket match between Kings XI Punjab and Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium in Hyderabad on April 29, 2019. | Photo Credit: KVS Giri
What about emceeing for different teams; do the fan-bases vary? “There is indeed a universal fan-following of the sport and then there’s the team-based love. For example, you have Kohli on Royal Challengers Bangalore or Dhoni on Chennai Super Kings so the crowd does move toward their all-time favourites. It gets challenging to hold back the crowd and to bring them back to the home team. When that is done successfully, it helps with getting Dhoni or Kohli on a wicket.” The swings of games in these instances are something for which emcees in general need to be prepared.
Sunny Khandelwal | Photo Credit: by arrangement
Sunny concludes the whole gig is a two-way learning environment. He’s taken a lot away from his years in IPL, elaborating, “When I’m doing a match for Sunrisers Hyderabad, there’s appreciation for the opposing team — whether a half-century or some other landmark — I’ve learned to adopt that from the fans.”
With Mumbai Indians and Sunrisers Hyderabad powering further through the tournament, Sunny is extremely excited with what’s to come... and it’s all fuelled by a love for sport as well as by a love to enthral.