Cricket in America will take a leap of faith as the Major League Cricket gets underway with the Los Angeles Knight Riders-Texas Super Kings match at the Grand Prairie Stadium in Texas.
Tickets for the opening match — Friday 6am start — were sold out shortly after going on sale.
The T20 league will be played from July 14 to 30 across two venues, with six teams in the fray. Besides the Knights and the Super Kings, the other teams are MI New York, Washington Freedom, Seattle Orcas, and San Francisco Unicorns. While the Grand Prairie Stadium will host 11 matches, seven games are scheduled at Church Street Park in North Carolina. The final is on July 30.
Captains of all the six teams were present at the unveiling of the MLC Champions Trophy in Dallas. The organisers also announced a star-studded line-up for the league’s commentary team, which includes Sunil Gavaskar, Graeme Smith and Alan Wilkins.
The players’ roster is also full of established international T20 stars like Andre Russell, Faf Du Plessis, Aaron Finch, Rashid Khan, Kieron Pollard, Quinton de Kock, Marcus Stoinis, Jason Roy and Wanindu Hasaranga.
Sunil Narine, the LA Knight Riders captain, expects the quality of the competition to be high. “... it will be high quality with all these international players feeding information to the youngsters — it will grow from strength to strength,” Narine said.
Narine’s team has a mix of T20 A-listers like Jason Roy, Lockie Ferguson and Russell, and also includes 32-year-old US pacer Ali Khan, who has been a part of the Kolkata Knight Riders in the past.
The writer is an intern with The Telegraph
