August 3, 2024

Home Runs Rising: Australia-USA Cricket Connection – Big Bash League

The second Major League Cricket final was essentially a showdown between NSW and Victoria, with more USA players likely to head to the Big Bash soon.

Earlier this week, at a former baseball stadium in Dallas, Australia’s top male bowler and batter of their generation faced off for the second time in just four days.

What promised to be a pair of thrilling duels between Pat Cummins and Steve Smith barely made headlines in their home country as the Smith-led Washington Freedom defeated Cummins’ San Francisco Unicorns in the Major League Cricket (MLC) finals.

Despite Smith’s match-winning 88 off 52 balls in the tournament decider at the same Grand Prairie ground that hosted the T20 World Cup opener in June, Cummins quietly upheld his lesser-known dominance over his Test vice-captain in both the final and the preceding qualifying match.

Cummins has always dismissed him in the four T20 matches where Smith has faced his long-time teammate. Their head-to-head record is 4 wickets for 8 runs from 13 balls across their encounters in the IPL and now the MLC.

It’s a fact that few fans in Australia would know—nor did it seem apparent to San Francisco skipper Corey Anderson, who didn’t bowl Cummins during the middle overs of the final’s first innings as Smith dominated—because none of their previous T20 encounters have taken place in Australia. They’ve also never played together in a domestic T20 match down under.

How has a two-year-old tournament in a non-Test playing nation accomplished something that Australia’s own T20 league has not?

“It’s new – being in America is obviously different to being in Australia, and having that experience is something players are really keen on having over here,” Michael Klinger, the former first-class batter and current Washington Freedom general manager, shared with cricket.com.au.

“The other thing, which is pretty obvious, is it’s a short tournament. It’s a three-week tournament and players of that ilk, they’re not coming for the money. They’re coming for the experience. They don’t need the money.

“This year was unique as well because the tournament was on the back of a World Cup which was played in America and the Caribbean, so lot of these players were already quite close to where we were playing.”

Beyond the impact of Australia’s star power, this recent MLC campaign also highlighted how a growing number of Australians are shaping the league’s success.

Cricket NSW (CNSW) and Cricket Victoria (CV) took great pride in that this year’s finalists, the only two of the six MLC teams not linked with IPL ownership groups, are essentially extensions of their own high-performance programs.

The Washington Freedom is affiliated with CNSW, where Klinger was recently the head of male T20 cricket. At the same time,. The San Francisco Unicorns have a similar partnership with CV, whose current general manager of cricket, Graham Manou, also attended the tournament.

The Washington and San Francisco franchises are owned by Indian and Indian-American tech entrepreneurs. Still, CNSW and CV receive funding from these clubs in return for offering high-performance expertise and personnel.

Both teams’ off-field staff are predominantly Australian. Ex-Test stars Ricky Ponting and Shane Watson are the respective head coaches, supported by Australian staff, including Cameron White, Shawn Bradstreet (Washington), Ben Rohrer, and Adam Griffith (San Francisco). MLC’s tournament director is Canberra-born Justin Geale. At the same time, San Francisco’s GM, David White, formerly CV’s head of community cricket, works alongside Manou in managing the Unicorns.

Eight of the 22 players who competed in the final on Monday morning (AEST) were Australian, and an additional eight participated in the tournament. Travis Head was named the tournament’s most valuable player, and Smith earned the player of the match award in the final.

On the other hand, many local American players from San Francisco and Washington had traveled to Australia during last summer’s Big Bash.

“We made sure that they were exposed to the professionalism of high-level cricket, which not all of them had been exposed to, and play some games against high-quality opposition,” Klinger stated.

“To have them exposed to that no doubt has given us an advantage. Just from observing this tournament, it looks like at Washington Freedom and even San Francisco Unicorns, the local players have been the best in the competition.”

Essentially, the state associations are marketing the success of Australian cricket.

This has not gone unnoticed; Cricket Australia is believed to be evaluating potential involvement in MLC. There is a strong interest in ensuring that Australian cricket benefits from the game’s expansion in the USA, especially with cricket’s return to the Olympics at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles on the horizon.

According to Klinger, this could materialize sooner, possibly as soon as next month’s KFC BBL overseas player draft.

Several American players will be available, including some who played a vital role in the USA’s surprising victory over Pakistan in June. The win propelled the USA into the T20 World Cup’s Super Eights stage.

Anderson, the former New Zealand international, played for the Hobart Hurricanes last season. However, including players like South Africa-born Andries Gous and former India U19 paceman Saurabh Netravalkar in this summer’s BBL would significantly advance the Australia-USA cricket relationship.

“I reckon there’s going to be a few getting picked up,” Klinger mentioned. “There’s two in our team who I think (are good chances). Andries Gous a wicketkeeper-batsman who obviously did really well in the World Cup.”

“Netravalkar – he was the leading wicket-taker over here and did well in the World Cup as well, a left-arm bowler who can bowl with the new ball and bowl variations at the death. I thought Hassan Khan from the Unicorns, a left-arm orthodox bowler and left-hand middle-order batter, could provide a team with a great option as well.”

“Teams would be crazy not to have a look at them, especially with the lack of high-end talent coming into the draft this year from overseas. I think having those guys at the middle to the lower levels will add a lot to some teams.”

The growth of US cricket has been fueled by the country’s large population with South Asian heritage.

The sell-out MLC final in Dallas highlighted the vital interest of that community in the game, as did the immense demand for tickets to the ICC’s marquee World Cup match between India and Pakistan at a ‘pop-up’ stadium in New York.

Ponting believes that the MLC and the ICC could do even more to develop the game among young Americans.

“I think there’s a still a role for the players and the franchises. I think the World Cup missed a trick as well in not promoting the game more at grassroots level, getting into schools,” Ponting, a broadcast commentator during the World Cup, stated before the MLC final.

“That’s where I think the next stage and growth will come from. This generation of American cricket fans, we can’t just sit back and hope that they’re going to promote the game.

“I think the game needs to do what it can to get out amongst kids. Baseball is such a big game for youngsters here in the US … (but) you go to a baseball game, it’s four hours, there’s not a lot of excitement that happens. I think it’s less than one home-run hit per game.

“If you look at it that way, compared to what an entertainment package of three hours of cricket can bring to a younger generation, that’s the way we should be looking at trying to promote the game here.”

Those who attract top cricketers to their emerging league are realistic about the challenges ahead. Klinger notes that next year’s international schedule may be less favorable to the competition.

Another concern is the limited number of suitable venues. This year’s MLC was held at only two locations, Dallas and Morrisville, North Carolina, and there is no women’s MLC. The BBC has reported that discussions about establishing an American women’s league are still in the early stages.

However, the MLC provides benefits that its competitors cannot match for the world’s top male players.

Cummins candidly discussed how the Unicorns owners’ connections to Silicon Valley and the venture capital industry significantly influenced his decision to sign a four-year deal with the team, an unprecedented move for a current Australian Test captain.

Cummins and Fraser-McGurk’s filmed Zoom call with Travis Bazzana, a former junior cricketer from Sydney who last month became the first Australian to be selected as the number one pick in the Major League Baseball draft, was another quintessentially American moment.

Australian cricketers’ social media posts showcasing their golf outings at some of the world’s top courses, attending MLB games, enjoying a southern barbecue, and even attending a Morgan Wallen concert served as savvy promotions for a trip to the USA.

In this regard, Klinger is confident that the MLC is ahead of England’s soon-to-be-privatized Hundred competition.  “Players are choosing it over the Hundred at the moment,”he noted.

“Who knows what happens in the future, that could change. In an ideal world, I’d love to have those two tournaments separated. Potentially with the privatisation of the Hundred, there may be some duplicate owners in both leagues, if that’s IPL setups or other setups.

“A short tournament where they can have maximum impact certainly helps (the MLC’s appeal). It’s going to be key for MLC down the track not to get too greedy and start to play too many games and make the tournament go longer.

“If they do that the likelihood is the best overseas players might not want to come. We’ve got to find that balance of keeping the tournament quite short and sharp and attracting the best players.”

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