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Major League Cricket Sports News

Launch of Major League Cricket in the USA

By Blake Roberts Founder & Editor in Chief Updated: 24 June 2023

Blake Roberts Founder & Editor in Chief

Blake Roberts is the founder of Betting.US and is currently heading the creative team as Editor in Chief. Born and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Blake is a great sports fan, with football and basketball being his favorite. He’s our trusted voice for all betting-related matters.

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The tumultuous process of launching a professional cricket league in the United States has been put to bed with the advent of the Major League Cricket (MLC), slated to get underway on July 13. The cricketing ecosystem in the US had struggled to get off the mark due to poor governance. But the MLC, backed by some influential Indian investors, has created room for optimism in the country. As a result, there will be several online sportsbooks with cricket markets looking to get in on the action.

The league received an initial funding of $120m from the technology and media sectors and Indian top brass Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, who has also invested in the franchise from Seattle. The development is an addition to the fledgling cricket ecosystem in the country that saw MLC joining hands with the Knight Riders Group – principal owners of Kolkata Knight Riders, Trinbago Knight Riders, and Los Angeles Knight Riders – earlier this year for the $30 million project of constructing a stadium at the at Great Park in the city of Irvine.

It is certain that these investments, along with four out of the six franchises for the inaugural edition, bought by the IPL owners – Kolkata Knight Riders (Los Angeles), Chennai Super Kings (Texas), Mumbai Indians (New York), and Delhi Capitals (Seattle Orcas) – is going to change the cricketing ecosystem in the United States forever. The two other franchises that didn’t attract IPL owners have found investors of Indian origin.

The top investors in the San Francisco franchise are Venture Capitalists Venky Hariharan and Anand Rajaraman. These duos are long associated with their investment in the Australian state side of Victoria. Nadella, Indian-American Sanjay Govil, and the New South Wales state cricket board partly own the other franchise Washington Freedom.

The US was an untapped market for the IPL franchises as they expanded their business in the T20 leagues to the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), and newly-formed SA20 League, and the International League T20 (ILT20) league. This system has also seen top T20 players letting go of their lucrative national board contracts to remain associated with their respective T20 franchises.

One of the big names to undergo this process is England T20 opener Jason Roy, who will feature for Los Angeles Knight Riders in the MLC. Roy joined the Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL 2023 as a replacement for Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan and decided to forfeit his incremental contract with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to join the US T20 league for a whooping sum of £300,000 for the first two seasons. His English teammate Reece Topley and Jofra Archer were among the sought-after players for a similar deal but will not be a part of the league’s inaugural edition.

It is, moreover, understood that the salary cap per franchise in the MLC is comparable to the ILT20, Big Bash League, and ECB’s The Hundred at slightly over $1.1m. The league respected and followed the draft format followed by the major sports in the US, like basketball and baseball. It is understood there is no room for auction in the league, and the salary cap for each player is fixed during the draft. The players enlisted in the first round of the draft were acquired for $75,000. Meanwhile, the players acquired in the second, third, and fourth-round fetched $65,000, $50,000, and $40,000, respectively. The inaugural draft saw nine rounds where players were acquired for a fixed salary cap of $35,000, $25,000, $15,000, $10,000, and $2,500 in the next five rounds.

The draft took place on March 19 at the Space Center Houston, giving wings to the dreams of Indian players, who shifted to their base in the US to fulfill their cricketing career. One such player was Harmeet Singh, an all-rounder and member of the India U-19 World Cup winning squad in 2012. He was the first player to be picked at the draft and will ply his trade for the Seattle Orcas alongside well-established names of active players, such as Quinton de Kock, Dasun Shanaka, and Sikandar Raza.

Similarly, the Los Angeles Knight Riders acquired the services of former India U-19 World Cup-winning captain Unmukt Chand, who moved to the US after retiring from Indian cricket and is the leading run-scorer in Minor League Cricket. He will join the likes of the core Knight Riders members like Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Roy, and Lockie Ferguson in the franchise.

The MI New York has acquired a star-studded line-up in the form of premier Afghanistan all-rounder Rashid Khan, who is the captain of MI Cape Town in the SA20 League, alongside Trent Boult, Nicholas Pooran, Tim David, Dewald Brevis, Jason Behrendorff and Kagiso Rabada.

The Texas Super Kings will reunite Faf du Plessis and Ambati Rayudu, along with the prolific opener Devon Conway, David Miller, and Mitchell Santner. The Super Kings have handed the coaching responsibility to former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming, extending his role from the Indian Premier League (IPL) and SA20.