Liam Plunkett, the former right-arm pace bowler for England and a member of the World Cup-winning squad in 2019, has predicted a "explosion" of T20 cricket in the United States and revealed that Major League Cricket has secured more than 100 million pounds sterling in funding from private investors including tech giants Microsoft and Adobe (MLC).
A three-year contract with The Philadelphians in Minor League Cricket (MiLC) for the 2022 season was just signed by Plunkett, 37. The feeder to MLC is MiLC.
"Go big or leave it at that. In America, they operate in a similar manner. And given the funding behind it, it will be enormous. I predict an explosion "According to Plunkett, who has participated in 22 T20Is and 89 ODIs for England, on Tuesday.
The towering pacer said that great players from all around the world, especially English stars, will undoubtedly flock to the new professional T20 league. The first three weeks of the MLC will take place next summer.
According to the report, one of the six franchises has been acquired by IPL team Kolkata Knight Riders. Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC will serve as the bases for the six clubs.
With the last two Twenty20 International matches between India and the West Indies in Lauderhill and the US scheduled to co-host the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 with the West Indies, which will feature 20 countries for the first time, cricket is quickly becoming a significant sport in the US.
Plunkett believed that the MLC T20 competition might lure some notable players away from England's T20 Blast.
Plunkett, who left English cricket last year and relocated to the US, believes "Americans want to watch the greatest and I think we can entice them."
"When they realise how large it is, I believe they will absolutely get on board. You will see sold-out audiences because so many Americans enjoy cricket and because they know how to put on a show. Hopefully, you'll attract musicians like Jonny Bairstow, Andre Russell, and all of these other folks to play. Playing sports in America is a dream come true for many people."
The MLC T20 league's co-founder, Sameer Mehta, was mentioned in the article as adding that the competition will have reasonable salary caps, which will draw some of the best in the industry.
"We have high hopes that the top cricketers in the world will visit, and our salary caps will be quite generous. They will essentially compete with all other leagues save the IPL. I anticipate this to be quite alluring, and travelling to the US is also appealing.
We will be concentrating on June and July, and we are fortunate to not have too many conflicts with league or international cricket outside of England, said Mehta.
"The United States is currently the fourth- or fifth-largest cricket media market in the world. We know from our broadcasting days that there are probably eight million Americans who are aware of cricket, four million of those fans will bother to watch a game, and between 1.2 million and 1.5 million homes will actually spend good money to see a cricket game "he Mehta said.
"Economically speaking, we are enthusiastic about tripling our viewership in the following five years. We'll be among the top three leagues in the world if we accomplish that."
According to reports, MLC is constructing six sites in accordance with the demands of the International Cricket Council (ICC). The story continued, "The first will debut in Grand Prairie, Dallas County next year and will serve as the primary location for MLC's initial season with a permanent capacity of up to 9,000, up to 12,000 with temporary seats.