West Indies players to give US’ Major League Cricket a dose of star power
Published:Thursday | July 6, 2023 | 12:08 AMOrane Buchanan/Staff Reporter
TWO-TIME WORLD T20 champions, West Indies, will have top representation in the inaugural season of Major League Cricket (MLC) in the United States of America.
The T2O tournament, which will include six teams – Los Angeles Knight Riders, MI New York, San Francisco Unicorns, Seattle Orcas, Texas Super Kings and Washington Freedom – will see the tournament bowl off on July 13 and run through to July 30, with matches to be played at the Grand Prairie Stadium in Texas.
The tournament will be played in a single round-robin format with 15 league matches played among the six franchises before a four-match playoff phase begins.
Trinidad and Tobago and West Indies off spinner, Akeal Hosein, who has played 34 matches in the format for the regional side, taking 26 wickets at an average of 30.77, will turn out for the Washington Freedom.
Los Angeles Knight Riders will have the talented pair of Jamaican Andre Russell and another Trinidadian in Sunil Narine in their ranks.
WEALTH OF EXPERIENCE
Russell brings a wealth of experience, having won the World T20 trophy on two occasions with the West Indies along with being named Indian Premier League (IPL) player of the series in 2015 and was Caribbean Premier League winner in 2013 with the Jamaica Tallawahs.
Narine, who recently became the third bowler behind the pair of Dwayne Bravo and Rashid Khan to capture 500 T20 wickets following his dismissal of Colin Ingram during the English County T20 Blast competition back in June, also brings much experience to the side owned by the Knight Riders Group.
Former West Indies captains Kieron Pollard and Nicholas Pooran will turn out for the MI New York franchise.
The hard-hitting Pollard against Sri Lanka in 2021 became the third batsman to hit six sixes in an over, while Pooran has played in 75 matches for the West Indies, scoring well over a thousand runs at an average of 25.18, inclusive of nine half-centuries, with a top score of 74 not out.
The Texas Super Kings will include Trinidadian all-rounder Dwayne Bravo in the squad. To date, Bravo has taken the second most wickets in the Indian Premier League (183) behind leader Yuzvendra Chahal’s mark of 187, while in the Caribbean Premier League, Bravo leads the charts with 124 wickets ahead of teammate Sunil Narine with 101.