It was probably an unusual choice but where could you find a better launchpad than a space centre.

Last Sunday, in the latest attempt to start a professional T20 league in the US, Major League Cricket (MLC) held its inaugural player draft – American version of player auction – at the NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, the second-largest state in the US.

“It has been an icon of American leadership and history for the last several years,” Vijay Srinivasan, co-founder of American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) – USA Cricket’s commercial partner and parent company of the MLC, said about the choice of venue.

“I don’t know if it (professional sports draft at NASA Space Centre) has happened before, but we really enjoyed it.”

The US is the biggest market for sports in the world with some of the biggest sporting leagues operating in the country and affluent fans ready to splurge. But cricket, considered the second most-watched sport in the world after football, somehow has yet to create a space for itself in the US sports market.

Attempts were made in the past, too, to start professional leagues in the US but, for various reasons, including bad governance, those attempts never got off the launchpads.

The latest attempt could be the game changer, though. For starters, the project, with an initial funding of $120 million, has the backing of some of the most successful and influential people from technology and media sectors, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. As many as four out of six MLC teams have the involvement of Indian Premier League (IPL) clubs – Mumbai Indians, Kolkata Knight Riders, Delhi Capitals and Chennai Super Kings.

“We are not bringing a sport to the US, we are not building a new audience. We have an existing audience that we are working with and we’ve engaged with for the last several years and this is an audience that is certainly large enough to sustain and help us launch our league, and we are hoping this audience grows from here,” Srinivasan said.

“If you look at the 2015 and 2019 Cricket World Cups. The number of people who travelled to those events in Australia and England, the largest travelling audience outside of India came from the US.”

Cricket Means South Asia

The first season of the MLC will be played from 13 to 30 July with six teams playing 19 games (it could rise to 30 games from season 2) at two venues in Dallas and North Carolina. The timing gives the MLC some advantage over other similar leagues in other parts of the world. July is an offseason for all the major teams, except England and West Indies. It will help MLC avoid any overlapping with another T20 league.

Cricket in the US is mostly played and watched by people from South Asia, and the MLC organisers understand that. That’s probably the reason why the six MLC teams are strategically located in the cities that have a large South Asian diaspora – Seattle, Washington, Los Angeles, New York, Texas and San Francisco – to take advantage of the existing fanbases.

According to Srinivasan, who ran Willow TV, a sports channel dedicated to airing international cricket in the US, for close to one-and-a-half decade, there are about 45 lakh homes across the US that are interested in cricket.

“It’s an audience that is as large as the entire population of New Zealand,” Srinivasan said.

“The US is the 4th largest media market for cricket in the world [after India, Pakistan and Bangladesh].

“It’s a very affluent and highly educated demographic that watches Willow TV and for them cricket is a passion. It’s probably the wealthiest demographic of any sport in the US,” he added.

Two-fold Challenge

The idea of MLC germinated back in 2016 when Srinivasan and his partners sold the Willow TV. Having worked with cricket audience, they were aware of the huge demand for cricket in the US.

In the very beginning, they identified two major challenges: infrastructure and a pool of quality domestic players.

So, MLC spent the next few years in creating a framework to develop and nourish domestic players, and improve grounds and training facilities.

“The biggest hurdle for launching a league in the US has always been the lack of infrastructure to play top-tier cricket,” Srinivasan admitted.

“When we launched there was only one stadium in Florida. We are now close to completion of our first two venues and we will be adding venues almost every year going forward.”

To improve the quality of domestic cricket, a lot of players were brought in from other countries where cricket is much more developed. India was one of them.

The first overall pick in the draft by Seattle Orcas was all-rounder Harmeet Singh, who was a member of the Indian squad that won the 2012 Under-19 World Cup. His captain in that World Cup, Unmukt Chand, was later picked by Los Angeles Knight Riders. Both of them, and many others from different countries, moved to the US in the last few years as part of MLC’s plans to make their domestic cricket more competitive.

The MLC organisers have also decided to allow a maximum of six overseas players in the playing XI.

“The second hurdle was the player pool in the US. We’ve been very lucky that a lot of players over the last two or three years have chosen to move from other major cricket playing countries and bring their professional cricket skills to the US,” Srinivasan said.

“So, we’ve expanded the number of high-quality players living in the US significantly and they have then been playing against the local domestic player pool, which already existed and they have all combined.”

It may not match the IPL or the BBL in the star quotient but the inaugural MLC season will have several big international names. Quinton de Kock, Mitch Marsh, Marcus Stoinis, Anrich Nortje, Wanindu Hasaranga, Aaron Finch, Liam Plunkett and Corey Anderson have already joined teams and more names are expected to be added in the coming days.

Long Journey

Cricket in the US, despite all the investment and hard work in the last few years, is in a nascent phase and a work in progress. Their national T20 championship, called the Minor League Cricket (MiLC), is just two seasons old, their national team is yet to appear in an ICC World Cup (it will change at next year’s T20 World Cup to be co-hosted by the West Indies and the US) and cricket infrastructure is still coming up.

“I really think about this as a multi-decade journey,” said Soma Somasegar, managing director of Madrona Ventures and one of the lead investors in Seattle Orcas.

“I don’t expect things to magically change overnight.

“It’s about bringing a world-class sport that is the second largest-watched sport in the world to the largest media market for sports in the world.”