USA Cricket announce franchise-based Minor League T20 tournament

The USA Cricket Board met in person in New York on Friday. © USA Cricket

Cricket in the USA may well experience a paradigm shift as USA Cricket and the American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) announce the official launch of the Minor League T20 franchise tournament. The tournament is slated to take place over the span of nine weeks starting from the July 4th weekend with the games primarily taking place on the weekends.

ACE has identified four major conferences (West, Central, North East and South East) to scatter the 22 teams that will participate in the inaugural event. The West includes six teams from the Bay Area, LA and Seattle. The Central Conference will feature three teams from the Mid West including Chicago and three teams from Texas representing Houston, Austin and Dallas. The North East conference is set to have six teams including three teams from the cricketing hot bed of the New York Metropolitan area, Washington DC, Boston and Morrisville while the South East conference will have four teams with franchises located around the catchment areas Georgia and Florida. Each team will have a home venue and more than 50% of the matches in the first edition are expected to be played on turf wickets. It is expected that all the games will be live streamed with the playoffs being aired on TV. The initial edition of the Minor League is all set to roll out with 170 games in total.

Organized domestic cricket on a national scale has been non-existent in the USA for sometime now. The last domestic tournament organized by a recognized governing body was by the now-defunct USACA in 2014. However, USA has a strong league cricket culture especially in the states with a high expat population. These leagues which are predominantly volunteer driven operate robustly are the breeding grounds for future talent. ACE have taken cognizance of the prevalent cricketing landscape in the country and are in the process of setting up a governing council that will include the presidents of the major high profile leagues in the country to frame up policies concerning team composition, trials, selection policies and other matters of governance of the Minor League.

"These leagues are the lifeblood of cricket that's happening here and we want to use their local cricketing knowledge to build the governance rules. These leagues are volunteer driven and they want to see a pathway for their own players. This is an opportunity for their best players to go one level beyond and potentially even into a major league contract is what we are offering and in return we are asking them(league presidents) to be a part of the discussion." said Sameer Mehta of the ACE to Cricbuzz.

Each minor league team is expected to have two reserved spots for U19 players. ACE will conduct a talent ID event for U19 players with aspirations to play in the Minor League as part of their endeavour to unearth young talent and give them a flavor of senior competitive cricket right away. The event will be hosted in Houston between June 20-28. Although the event itself is by invitation only but all the players attending various academies and Youth Leagues will be eligible to be considered. A total of 100-120 players will be invited after they pass a thorough coach-peer review process. The players will then be divided into 8-10 teams to play a round of matches with each youngster getting about five to six games to showcase his skills. ACE will send coaches and scouts to conduct the matches who will then identify the best juniors who can potentially then immediately play in the minor league.

"Talent Identification Event will be overseen by Major League Cricket (ACE) as it's meant to be a pathway for the Minor League. We are supervising it very, very carefully. It will be open, unbiased and fair. So, what's happening is we will be reaching out to every major Academy in the US and their own coaches are sending their best players list and we are asking for a peer review amongst other coaches along with some historical information" said Mehta.

The Minor League is expected to be further embellished by having about two to three 'professionals' in every team set up. A plethora of professional players including active first-class cricketers from the West indies and the subcontinent get invited to the US every year by a number of affluent cricket clubs all over the country. US is also a home to players who've been professional at some point in their past but also play some level competitive cricket actively. These players will further be spread out evenly across the teams and will be expected to mentor and coach their respective squads.

USA Cricket and ACE have come together in quite an unconventional fashion. This is a unique partnership that is fledgling in world cricket where a commercial entity has partnered with a governing body to operate a professional top flight international quality T20 league which will be underpinned by a semi-professional city-based T20 league which in turn will be a breeding ground of sorts for players aiming to go fully professional along with heavy focus on grooming young talent. ACE also plans on investing heavily in cricketing infrastructure with an eye on forging a chain of state-of-the-art cricket academies underpinning all Minor League teams. From a high level, one may assume (depending on what end of the spectrum they see the light from) that this arrangement may marginalize the role of national governing body. But Iain Higgins , CEO of USA Cricket feels there is much more to it than it meets the naked eye.

"In this country, most of the successful American sports are league-centric. In other words, much of the investment, fan engagement and development efforts are based around the professional league structure and its teams, so, for example, everyone is extremely familiar with the NBA, MLB or the NFL. And whilst there are national governing bodies that have an overriding responsibility for the development of these sports in the United States, they certainly don't take centre stage and everybody is comfortable with that model," Higgins told Cricbuzz.

"In our context, Major League Cricket is the equivalent of the NFL, MLB or NBA. However, cricket has an enormously popular and thriving international dimension to it that has long been the life-blood of the game, and USA Cricket aspires to play regular bilateral international cricket against Full Members and compete regularly in ICC global events. So it's really important for USA Cricket to remain a prominent player in the partnership with MLC because it is USA Cricket that puts the national teams on the field of play and develops the high performance plan and environment that identifies, nurtures and selects the best talent available to the country. In the cricketing world, it's also USA Cricket that represents the interests of the sport in the USA on the international stage and retains membership of the ICC." added Higgins.

"Moreover, USA Cricket also retains responsibility for developing the domestic cricketing pathway and structures that sit under MLC's efforts. So, for example, it is USA Cricket that will develop entry-level school and community programs, youth programs and make efforts to promote cricket within colleges. These initiatives will take a while to develop and deliver, of course, but we are pleased to be able to announce, that, among other things, we are going to run regional competitions in 2020 that will feed up to national tournaments for the U14 and U17 boys, as we seek to assemble the best junior talent with one eye on the ICC Under 19 Boys Cricket World Cup in two years from now.

"In MLC we have found the best possible partner who understands just how important all of these sorts of initiatives are to its long term success with the professional Twenty20 League and we continue to work closely with MLC in a way that sets us up to be able to tackle the unique challenges faced in this country and to deliver long-term growth of the sport here," said Higgins.