Welcome back! We missed you in IPL9… how does it feel to be back?

Honestly I didn’t go very far away because Sony is like family. My connection with the IPL is close to my heart and my association with it is very strong. One of the huge reasons for me to come back this year was also because I was asked the question ‘Are you in the IPL’ more than ‘Hi, how are you?’. So when Sony came to me, I was like you know what since this year it’s all about the fans, I am going to come back to the show for the fans. It also made me realise that yes we do have trolls on social media but you also have people who genuinely love you, follow your work and appreciate. Even when I didn’t do the IPL I was being bombarded the same way and now when I am doing it, they are doing the same thing. So it shows consistency.

It is the 10th year of IPL and a huge milestone, for me it is my 10th year of presenting cricket as well. My first ODI series was India versus West Indies in 2007, so as they say Dus ki dahaad in KKR, toh meri dahaad bhi hai (smiles).

What are your top three memories from ‘yeh 10 saal...’?

(Thinks) Oh my god! One definitely will be Kolkata Knight Riders winning in 2012 and the entire team dancing with Shah Rukh Khan and me dancing in the studio as well. Another top moment would be… umm… just watching Brendon McCullum hitting 158 not out in the first match of IPL 2008… well you cannot forget that. The third moment will happen this year when the best team wins and it’s the 10th year so it is huge thing! Especially a team that has not won the IPL so far, if one of them can lay their hands on the coveted trophy it will be very special for them and I am looking forward to that moment.

What kind of challenges have you faced in these 10 years of presenting the game?

(Laughs) Oh my god… innumerable ones! Firstly, being a woman. You know it is a male dominated sort of arena and to get there, be there it is quite unbelievable how I have been actually asked to come year on year on…. Also, for people to take me seriously. I am blessed with good genes and I have been told that I am hot but after one point in time you need people to appreciate you for the work that you do. I needed to create a niche for myself, I needed people to say that she is not just a pretty face and I think I have achieved that and for me that is the biggest takeaway.

When you are in a male dominated area you are surrounded by experts, cricketers and the audience, it is difficult… like I always say I am not an expert, I am a presenter and I am here to put together a show. I am not here to give opinions because I haven’t lifted a bat in my life and I am in no position to do that. The audience often tend to judge you but I must say I love my fans to death!

This year, many of the teams have changed and many new players have come in… any faves?

I really like the fact that a lot of domestic players have been picked up. Be it Aniket Choudhary for RCB or T. Natarajan (Kings XI Punjab)... all these domestic players have actually got a chance to come out and showcase their skills and what better place than the IPL platform?! Look at the Pandya brothers (Hardik and Krunal), what are they doing for the Mumbai Indians man! They are creating history together. So for me definitely the Indian domestic players are the ones to watch out for.

Which TV presenters do you look up to?

Well, among our presenters, I really enjoy working with Gaurav (Kapur) a lot. We do a lot of shows together, I like his wit and sense of humour and spontaneity and we are pretty much similar because we go off the hook. I don’t like things to be too rehearsed, even when I am talking to a player I like to take it from what they are saying. I mean I go about the particular things my producers are trying to get out… but I like to have a freewheeling chat.
Amongst my top presenting icons would definitely be Ellen DeGeneres.  She is amazing and she set a trend worldwide 20 years back when she came out being gay, that takes a lot of courage, in a time when the world was not ready to accept it and then to pave her path and go where she has. Again, she too is spontaneous and I think that’s my school of presenting.

Gaurav and I often joke that we are husband and wife because we do a lot of shows together and he has been there from my first ever show for Channel V, because he used to be a Channel V VJ! I was in Rome for Get Gorgeous and he was there.

I like Mayanti Langer very much because I like the fact that she knows what she is talking about, very knowledgeable and crisp and very well spoken.

We love to ogle the cute players, do you do that too when you are on the ground?

Ya, of course… what you think!

Wow! Who do you find the cutest?

Arre, the cuteness changes but current fave would have to be… umm... I like Virat Kohli! I just met him the other day and we had this chat where both laughed a lot because we were talking about his debut against Sri Lanka in Dambulla in 2008 and I was there. We are like, dude, we have come a long way! I mean, yes he is like India’s hero now but he hasn’t changed…

Yes, we saw your Instagram post about him…

Yes, I said to him that dude you are still Cheeku! And he was like ya, why would I change?

Tell us more about Virat, please!

He is very cool. He is a Scorpio and I am too, so I sort of can understand. So a lot of people also come to me and say that dude you haven’t changed. I think Scorpios have this thing where you don’t really change, you adapt to a situation....

Virat is very dedicated and extremist by nature. So he is massively into weight training now and obviously diet plays a huge role in it and his cheat meal is rajma-chawal! So I was like dude, are you crazy? There are a lot of sacrifices that go into becoming the person that he is and he has a long way to go, he is only 28!

Then the pressure of everyone comparing him to Sachin… but I liked what he said when I asked Virat about this; he said, ‘He (Sachin) would always be to me who I had picked up the bat for and I will never replace that guy. No matter what the world says, no matter how excited they get with the situation and love to talk about it, for me it is a no-no and it is never going to happen. He is in his place and I will never be able to take his place’. It was nice and honest.

Off the field he is not aggressive and over the years he has mellowed and I feel Virat has ignited a fire in the Indian team because he plays this fiery brand of cricket; Indians as such we are very docile but he has changed that. When we went to Australia this time we gave them full moonh tod jawaab! And I am glad that it happened only because of Virat Kohli, let’s be very clear. You can tell that he wears his heart on his sleeve… I find that hot!

But the cutest cricketer?

Umm, I think Sachin Tendulkar. I mean if I still get weak in my knees then there is something, na? No other cricketer I feel nervous in front of except him because something happens to me and I start to behave stupid and idiotic and say stupid things!

Okay, it’s been a year of your brand LabelKiss... how is it doing?

My baby is doing very well! We have now gone offline and we have a kiosk as well in Select Citywalk (in Saket, New Delhi) and we are planning to expand to four more cities... Calcutta, Bangalore, Mumbai and Chennai in the next one year. We decided to go online and then offline because we think it compliments each other. While we are a hugely growing e-commerce nation, I also feel that we still sort of like touch-and-feel. Personally I wouldn’t buy clothes online because I need to feel it and see the fabric whereas accessories I do buy online because I can see how it looks. That’s the reason I started doing accessories. We are launching a new website with a whole new look and we are going international.

What are the pop trends from the portal?

Trends seem to change rapidly but right now it’s summer and my usual sort of aesthetic sense says to keep it simple and sexy.  

Cricket, LabelKiss and family, it must be crazy juggling that...

Yes, it’s amazing juggling my entrepreneur life. From 8am I am like boom boom boom with my office and then suddenly I am like let’s do hair and make-up (smiles). It’s crazy with the travel, shows and then my husband and house and then my family and then I have my parents in Calcutta, so yeah it’s like 24 hours is too little in a day! I am the kind of player who performs under pressure, when things are going crazy with so much pressure that time I am in my full-on mode. I like it because it drives me.

So, what’s after IPL?

I am quickly going for a vacation in Maldives for four days then I will be leaving for my Europe trip like every year, I will be gone for a month. I love Capri so I will go back there, we are trying to do Hvar in the Czech Republic, it is apparently the new party hot spot, and there will be a stop at Paris.  

Pramita Ghosh