2024-07-05 19:35:05
First things first. When does it start?
The first match is on Friday, July 5, with MI New York taking on Seattle Orcas in Morrisville. The tournament will go on till July 28. There will be a total of 25 matches.
So who are the teams participating? And who won it the first time around?
The six teams are Los Angeles Knight Riders, MI New York, San Francisco Unicorns, Seattle Orcas, Texas Super Kings and Washington Freedom.
Are you sure it’s the MLC and not the IPL? There seem to be a lot of familiar names…
That’s because IPL franchises have invested in most of the teams in the tournament, as they have in other franchise leagues like SA20, ILT20 and the CPL. IPL franchises own four teams in the MLC. Apart from the three obvious ones, Seattle Orcas are owned by the GMR Group, who co-own Delhi Capitals.
Washington Freedom, owned by Indian-American entrepreneur Sanjay Govil, have Cricket New South Wales as their high-performance partner. San Francisco Unicorns, owned by Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan, have a partnership with Cricket Victoria.
We saw games in New York and Lauderhill in the T20 World Cup, apart from Dallas. Will the MLC also be played in those grounds?
No. This year’s MLC, like in 2023, will only be played at the Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas in Texas and Church Street Park in North Carolina’s Morrisville.
Last season, the first eight league games were played in Dallas and the next seven in Morrisville, before the tournament shifted back to Dallas for the knockout rounds. This year, however, both stadiums will host games throughout the season.
So you said Pooran played the last season. Who are some other big names that were there last season and will play this year as well?
A total of 23 overseas players who turned out in the inaugural season will be in action in MLC 2024 as well. Among them, some of the big names include Rashid Khan, Trent Boult, Heinrich Klaasen and Kieron Pollard.
And any exciting new additions this year?
USA pulled off a surprise and made it to the Super Eight stage of the T20 World Cup. So who will their local heroes line up for?
Milind Kumar, who took a blinder against Pakistan as a substitute fielder, will play for Texas Super Kings, while Andries Gous and Saurabh Netravalkar will play for Washington Freedom.
All this sounds good. So, what is the format of the league?
Like most franchise leagues, the MLC will first have a round-robin league stage. Last year, each team played the other once, but this time every team will play seven matches each in the league stage. This has contributed to the tournament growing from 19 games last year to 25 this season.
The top two teams will meet in the Qualifier, with the winners of that match advancing to the final.
The third and fourth-placed teams will meet in the Eliminator. The winner of the Eliminator will face the team that loses the Qualifier in the Challenger, where the second finalist will be decided.
But the MLC games don’t count as official T20s, right?
This means MLC will now be recognised as an official T20 league, with tournament playing records now counted as official format statistics.
And with the packed cricket schedule, is it not clashing with any of the several other T20 leagues around the world?
The Lanka Premier League is on till July 21, so Matheesha Pathirana will remain unavailable till Colombo Strikers are knocked out.
Abhimanyu Bose is a sub-editor with ESPNcricinfo
