Major League Cricket’s Historic Debut in the U.S.
By: Mahadev Desai
 

In the ever-expanding list of crickets global T20 franchises, U.S. now has added Major League Cricket or MLC franchise, a professional Twenty20 cricket league.

MLC will feature six teams from San Francisco; Los Angeles; Seattle; Dallas; New York and Washington. It hopes to expand it to ten teams in the future.

The six teams are: Captain
Los Angeles Knight Riders Sunil Narine
San Francisco Unicorns Aaron Finch
Seattle Orcas Wayne Parnell
Texas Super Kings Paf du Plessis
MI New York Kieron Pollard
Washington Freedom Moises Henriques
Each team will have maximum 19 players and minimum 16 players. These will be seasoned T20 franchise and international stars as well as promising domestic players.
The teams will play 18 matches, with the final on July 30, 2023.If there is a tie, then a ‘super over’ will decide the winner.
Some of the investors in the Major League Cricket are Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, co-owner of Seattle Orcas with the GMR Group; Adobe Inc.’s CEO Shantanu Narayen; Kolkata Knight Riders Group’s Shah Rukh Khan; Ross Perot Jr., to name a few.

Most matches will be played at the newly renovated Grand Prairie stadium, Texas, with 7,200 seats and a grass pitch. some others will be played at Church Street Park in Morrisville, North Carolina, with about 3,000 seats.
The inaugural match, under the floodlights, between Texas Super Kings V Los Angeles Knight Riders was played in Dallas on July 13,2023. It was a sold-out event. The Super Kings players in yellow uniforms, were cheered on by the supporters also in yellow dress, clapping and playing drums. The national anthem was played before the start of the match. The match which Texas Super Kings won by 69 runs, was also shown live on Willow TV.

Cricket fans in India can watch the matches live on Viacom’s Sports18 and on popular digital platform JioCinema. CBS Sports network will also do live broadcasts of some of the matches.
Major League Cricket (MLC) could become the biggest T20 franchise tournament in the world behind the Indian Premier League (IPL), former England fast bowler Liam Plunkett, who will play for San Francisco Unicorns said.

The prospects of the game of cricket becoming popular in the U.S. are bright because there is an almost five million strong Indian diaspora as well as cricket lovers from the Caribbean, Southeast, England, Australia, Newzealand, etc. The T20 format matches lasting for about three hours and providing exciting cricket, and loads of entertainment is bound to captivate the mainstream audience as well.
The Major League Cricket has been launched and cricket has bright prospects of becoming major sports in the U.S.