Cricket's American Dream..Is Alive And Kicking

As Saurabh Netravalkar charged in to bowl the final ball of the Super Over, the roar of “USA! USA!” bellowed across the Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas. Netravalkar, a software engineer at Oracle, was on the verge of scripting the biggest upset in international cricket. With seven needed off one ball, the left-armer kept it simple, pushed it wide as he’d done throughout, and all Pakistan’s Shadab Khan could manage was a single.

The US defeated Pakistan in the T20 World Cup. In doing so, to quote an X user, it had achieved “the equivalent of Prime Mike Tyson being knocked out by your cashier at Wal-Mart [sic].” This was the “moment that met the market” in a country where the sight of locals donning the US dark blue jersey, Uncle Sam hats on their heads, and plastic leis around their neck must have come as a pleasant surprise for the powers that be.

The win also came at a venue that represents abundant opportunities and challenges of building and growing the sport in a new market. Four years ago, the Grand Prairie Stadium was a “ballpark” which, in US-speak, is a sports venue where baseball is played. In 2020, private company and USA Cricket’s commercial partner American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) signed a long-term lease with the City of Grand Prairie and redeveloped the facility into a $20 million international-grade cricket stadium.

This is a radical transformation from 1999, when as a cricket-obsessed nut, I’d watch the Moov-AXN America Challenge in September that year. The five-match, one-day series between the A teams of India and Australia at Woodley Park in Los Angeles was probably the first attempt by cricket boards to dipstick the US as a market, having successfully tested Canada with the Sahara Cup (1996-1998).

Cut to today, a rough estimate of cricket’s addressable “critical mass” audience in the US could be somewhere around 5-10 million (primarily those of South Asian descent). While that might sound small in a country of 335 million, it matters. “As per (US) Census data, Indians have a higher per capita income of any demographic — higher than Jewish and Japanese people, which has historically not been the case. You have a very elite audience that way,” says Satyan Gajwani, vice-chairman of Times Internet in a conversation with The Playbook. To this effect, the United States’ hosting of the 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup and its inclusion in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics count as significant milestones.

But at the heart of the modern US cricket story is a one-year-old T20 league, the Major League Cricket (MLC), backed by prominent Indian-Americans such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, alongside IPL franchises such as CSK, Kolkata Knight Riders, and the Mumbai Indians, to name a few.

The big leagues

Vijay Srinivasan, co-founder of Willow TV (now acquired by Times Internet), still remembers the early days of cricket in the US. In the early 2000s, the sport was a hard sell with negligible interest. “Fortunately for us, technology stepped in at a great time. We took a punt on this new thing that very few people had experienced called streaming and decided to see if there was an alternate way to watch the sport in the US,” he tells The Playbook over a telephonic interview.

Having hooked millions of US-based cricket watchers to the sport through Willow, Srinivasan is now taking a second stab at commercialising cricket in the country, as co-founder of the MLC. “Our goal is to fit cricket into the model that existed for sport here,” he says. For good reason. The tournament that roped in Cognizant as its title sponsor, per San Francisco Unicorns co-owner Anand Rajaraman, posted revenues of about $8 million. And while Gajwani won’t confirm that number, he expects that to grow by 50-60% in its second year.

While the MLC’s successful debut and the ongoing T20 World Cup represent significant momentum, the sport’s growth will depend on infrastructure. Venues that are purpose-built for cricket aren’t readily available in the country, even if they are, the lack of ready turf pitches is also a concern. “Our challenge would be to convince cities across the country that “Hey, cricket is a sport on the upswing, with people in your communities that love the sport. You need to engage with us and dedicate some venues and land, and we’ll take it from there,” says MLC’s Srinivasan.

Having initiated the infrastructure push with two stadiums in Morrisville, North Carolina and Grand Prairie, the MLC, much like other American sports leagues, expects team owners to invest heavily in capital expenditures for stadiums for their respective franchises. This is quite a departure from countries such as India, England or even South Africa, where state associations or county boards build these fixed assets while allowing franchises to monetise during leagues.

The MLC also wants to buck the global trend of building a broadcast-friendly product by getting more butts in seats, which in relatively weaker economic markets is not a big revenue stream. The US sports events market is projected to reach $16.43 billion this year, and while broadcast can be significant, it is sold-out venues that provide a new sport with the validation it needs. To this effect, the MLC saw 70% of its matches sold out, with 80% of seats filled, 100% of the hospitality sold, and ticket sales contributing to a third of its first-year revenue, with broadcast and sponsorship contributing 30% each.

This is also why, unlike rivals such as the SAT20 and ILT20, the league is resisting the temptation to build for the lucrative Indian market. “Matches are played in the afternoons and evenings, which is not suitable for India. By and large, we are building for India. In the short run, we’ll probably make less, but in the medium to long run, that’s where we think we should be investing,” says Gajwani, before adding, “The people who have invested in this are not interested in building this for India. They want to build it for America. It will take longer.”

“MLC can be a real success. (There’s) no problem attracting players to come and play in the US. And no problems with funding/investment. The only real challenge will be facilities, but money and time can solve that with the right intent,” says Rohan Chandran, chief product officer of San Francisco-based Guild and a founding member of ESPN Cricinfo. “Great facilities with the ability to build a home following equal a successful franchise league. The cricketing hotspots are dense enough. So fans armed with $$$ are very much there, and there’s every reason for it to succeed. The market can be cracked.”

The grassroots dilemma

Part of the push is also to create pathways for talent wanting to move to the US to become professional cricketers. Or let them pursue their full-time day jobs while also playing cricket, something Netravalkar did back home in Mumbai when he was climbing up the ranks. This is also because the domestic talent pool is not as big as it is in major cricket countries. That is the second and most important piece of the puzzle, as Srinivasan puts it. You can have fans and venues, but what use is it if there are no players? The gap is currently being bridged by the Minor League Cricket (or MiLC).

Venu Palaparthi, a Wall Street professional and cricket aficionado, has spent nearly 20 years cracking the grassroots code. Palaparthi’s adventure with cricket began in 2000 with DreamCricket, a fantasy cricket website that later morphed into an academy, and later, a MiLC franchise in New Jersey Stallions, which now boasts of a few US national team cricketers such as captain Monank Patel and Sai Teja Mukkamalla.

“Without proper pathways, cricketers, especially younger ones, can lose the initiative. The presence of top domestic players in the Minor League provides a development guardian and is the first step towards moving up the ladder, be it MLC or the US national team,” Palaparthi tells The Playbook. But the most important element is to have the right kind of stakeholder/owner.

For instance, each team has up to 12-16 players from the US, with 2-3 priority domestic players and also, one wild card pick per franchise. Typically, these are international players with experience in their respective domestic cricket setups. Stallions, Palaparthi says, got West Indies T20 captain Rovman Powell as a wild card. “Earlier, our local talent didn’t have access to these players. They come in with a very competitive mindset and that rubs off on our players as well. The development secret sauce has to be both top-down and bottom-up.”

To this effect, ACE has been sponsoring cricketers such as Harmeet Singh and Corey Anderson (both US international players) to find coaching opportunities on P1 visas, while they pursue their cricket careers in these minor league franchises as the sole overseas players. According to sources, they’ve sponsored around 30-40 such cricketers from around the world to make the switch to the US, including the likes of the former India U19 World Cup-winning captain Unmukt Chand, the highest profile of them all.

“A lot of our players come here. They make a home here and have families here. They took a leap of faith in what we are building. It is not easy as a sportsman at the prime of your career. Many came during the pandemic, and it was not the best time for any of us. But they showed faith,” says Srinivasan of MLC. “Now what we are doing out there is the real deal. And I guess Pat Cummins signing up is a culmination of the Silicon Valley mindset,” he adds.

Future perfect?

Achieving the real deal has an administrative problem in the form of controversy-ridden USA Cricket. At the end of April, the cricket board avoided suspension from the ICC and per Forbes, has been put on “controlled funding” given its status as the T20 World Cup co-host. A dysfunctional board could potentially pose a challenge to the growing promise of the MLC.

The problem had reared its head in March 2023, when a dispute between USA Cricket and ACE (the organisers of MLC and MiLC) over foreign players wishing to participate in both leagues blew up and the ICC withheld no-objection certificates to member boards whose players wanted to participate in the leagues. The standoff eased in April last year, when the ICC again greenlit the tournament and ensured players’ participation. “It is up to USA Cricket to figure out the right way to partner with ACE/MLC on either side of MLC. The MLC doesn’t need USA Cricket, but USA Cricket may well need the MLC,” says Chandran of Guild.

The concern, however, is that USA Cricket’s issues are coming at a time when the MLC might well be on an expansion path. The MLC began with six franchises but now is looking to add four more teams to the mix over the next few years, with non-IPL franchise-owned teams seeking to raise further capital at a $80-100 million range, per industry insiders.

“It (USA Cricket) is less stable than you’d like. There’s a lot of politics on the governing body side, and there are different players. The USA Cricket board is dysfunctional, following past patterns when it was dysfunctional (too),” says a USA Cricket insider on condition of anonymity. “The ICC is now involved and taking a closer look and so is the US Olympic Committee, which has to now establish a governing body to run the sport during the Olympics. There’s pressure on them to shape up, but for now, let’s just focus on delivering this World Cup,” this person adds.

The post-mortem could involve a middle path, where both sides—ACE and USA Cricket—have an important role to play. This, per Chandran, could mean a split in responsibilities, with USA Cricket taking over the grassroots development, whereas ACE runs the private professional game, with both pathways integrating and feeding into each other. For that to work, it needs local talent to have aspirations and corresponding pathways. He adds, “If it’s built purely on temporary immigrant talent then it only takes one big pandemic or global downturn or anti-immigration government to crush the model.”

What Chandran says could be integral to what the MLC, per Gajwani, was primed to do: make the US one of the top five cricketing countries, whether in leagues, infrastructure, or talent pool.

“We’ve always believed that the success and failure of the league will correlate with the success of American cricket as the whole. The better the American national team is, the more relevant the local league is,” he signs off.