Start Of T20 League In US With IPL Investment Likely To Change Cricketing Ecosystem Forever

The world cricket's ecosystem is slowly seeing a paradigm shift towards franchise cricket and the entry of Indian Premier League franchises in the United States through the inaugural edition of Major League Cricket (MLC) could be a significant step in that direction. With Kolkata Knight Riders (Los Angeles), Chennai Super Kings (Texas), Mumbai Indians (New York) and Delhi Capitals (Seattle Orcas) taking ownership or making significant investments in four of the six franchises (the other two being Washington Freedom and San Francisco Unicorns), the cricketing landscape is going to change forever.

Even the two franchises which don't have IPL investments are also owned by persons of Indian origin. San Francisco Unicorns' top investors are Venture Capitalists Venky Hariharan and Anand Rajaraman, who have got Australian state side Victoria on board.

Washington Freedom is owned by Indian American Sanjay Govil along with New South Wales state cricket body from Australia. Not to forget Seattle has Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as one of the investors.

But the IPL franchises are now expanding their bouquet of teams across leagues in the West Indies, UAE, South Africa and now US is another untapped market that wasn't being explored for a long time despite the Asian diaspora craving for some regular cricket show at least once a year.

On Monday, early morning India time (Sunday night in Houston), the likes of former Australia captain Aaron Finch (San Francisco), Quinton de Kock (Seattle Orcas), a former South African skipper and even now a batting mainstay, premier pacer Anrich Nortje (Washington), Sri Lanka's top T20 freelancer Wanindu Hasaranga (Washington), dashing all-rounders Mitchell Marsh (Seattle) and Marcus Stoinis (SF