sport news T20 cricket backed to 'explode' in USA by Liam Plunkett trends now

Liam Plunkett borrows a phrase from his adopted homeland to explain America’s approach to launching their first professional T20 league.

‘It’s go big or go home,’ the England World Cup winner tells Sportsmail over the phone from Philadelphia. ‘That is how they do stuff in America. And with the money that is behind this, it is going to be massive. I think it will explode.’

The competition Plunkett is referring to is Major League Cricket (MLC), which has secured more than £100million in funding from private investors including the bosses of tech giants Microsoft and Adobe. 

The Indian Premier League’s Kolkata Knight Riders have already acquired one of the six franchises, which will be based in Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC. 

Plunkett believes the world’s best players, not least some of his ex-England team-mates, will want to be a part of the three-week league when it starts next summer, potentially pulling some big names away from the T20 Blast.

‘Americans want to watch the best and I think we can attract them,’ says Plunkett, who quit the English game last year to live in the States with his American wife, Emeleah.

‘I think they will definitely jump on board when they see how big it is. With how many people love cricket here and the way Americans put on a show, you will get packed-out crowds.

‘Hopefully you will get people like Jonny Bairstow, Andre Russell, all of these guys coming across to play. It is a lot of people’s dream to play sport in America.’

Of course, like with all of the world’s franchise leagues, money talks — and MLC’s player wages promise to be the best bar one.

Co-founder Sameer Mehta said: ‘We are quite hopeful that the best cricketers in the world will come and we will have very decent salary caps. They will be pretty much up there with any of the other leagues outside of the IPL. I expect this to be very attractive and the US is also an attractive destination.

‘June and July are the months we will be focusing on and we are lucky to not have too many clashes with international cricket or league cricket outside of England.’

Mehta knows the potential for cricket in the US better than anyone. Two decades ago, he launched Willow, a subscription sports channel devoted to airing overseas cricket events to fans in America, the majority being South Asian expats.

‘The US is already the fourth or fifth largest media market for cricket in the world,’ says Mehta.

‘From our broadcasting days, we know there are probably about 8million people in the US who know about cricket, about 4m fans who will bother to watch a cricket game and about 1.2m to 1.5m households that will actually pay good dollars for a cricket game.

‘These are decent numbers and that audience base is constantly growing through immigration and can easily double or triple if we build a successful product and present it well.

‘In terms of economics, we are gung-ho about doubling our audience base in the next five years. If we do that, we’ll be in the top three leagues in the world.’

In a previous attempt by cricket to conquer America in 2015, Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar captained teams of retired legends in a three-match exhibition series at baseball stadiums.