NEW DELHI, MAY 08,
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.”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.
