Player registration portal opened for inaugural Minor League Cricket
Representative Image: The 24-team city-based T20 competition is slated to begin on August 22 © Getty
USA Cricket and American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) announced the
opening of an online player registration portal for the inaugural
edition of the 24-team city-based Minor League Cricket T20. The
registration process which opened up earlier this week is set to
continue until its deadline on July 31. The registration process will
lay the initial groundwork for the player draft which is tentatively set
for the first week of August.
"It is exciting to know that we have received over 1000 player
registrations on our website at majorleaguecricket.com in mere two days
of the opening of the registration process. Minor League Cricket is
confirmed for this year starting August 22 obviously keeping Covid
(impacts) in mind. It is thrilling to introduce an official top level
domestic T20 cricket tournament in the US that will feature players of
international repute and quality," said William Swann, Director of
Corporate Development at ACE to Cricbuzz.
Cricbuzz understands that there are multiple moving pieces to the
player draft of the first edition of the Minor League. All the four
conferences (Western, Central, Southern and Eastern) will further
constitute to have its own 'draft zones' if there is more than one team
situated in the vicinity, the idea being to hold a draft in each draft
zone rather than having a single unified draft on the whole. For
example, the Eastern Conference consists of a draft zone that
encompasses New Jersey and New York City. This draft zone is set to
field 3 teams and these 3 teams will then partake in a draft that will
consist of players registered specifically in these draft zones.
Leading up to the draft day a franchise owner will be able to recruit 3
'professional players', 3 'domestic players' and 3 U21 players in their
18 men roster. A franchise owner can directly recruit these players
outside of the draft provided the player had selected that franchise
owner's team as the 'preferred team' during the registration process.
A player who has played any game at the international, FC, List A or
'T20' level will be considered a 'professional'. The professional
players are further classified into 'domestic professionals', who are
players domiciled in the US and 'Wildcard professionals' who are players
not domiciled in the US. However, there will be a cap of only 1
wildcard professional per team. Players will be considered in the
domestic and U21 categories if they are US citizens or are already
domiciled in the US and do not fall in the 'professional' category.
Despite ACE being the promoters and owners of the Minor League, USA
Cricket CEO Iain Higgins in an earlier chat with Cricbuzz had indicated
that Minor League Cricket will be one of the important pathways towards
national selection and the board intends to work closely with ACE on
matters governing selection policies among a few others.
"We want to be as transparent with the governance and selection matters
as possible. We have set up a Minor League Governing Council that will
be comprised of members from ACE, USA Cricket office bearers and a few
representatives from the independent local leagues" said Sameer Mehta of
ACE.
"We have also put selection mechanisms in place. Each team will have a
3-member selection committee to oversee squad selection. The chairman of
the selection committee will be appointed by the franchise owner with
strong ties in the local cricketing fraternity. The other 2 selectors
will be appointed by ACE in consultation with the Governing Council and
the franchise owner respectively."
US is a home to an incredibly large number of expats from the
commonwealth and the Indian subcontinent especially. This includes
innumerable players who have played decent amount of representational
and age limit competitive cricket in their homeland as well as the 2nd
and 3rd generation immigrants who have successfully managed to preserve
the game in a country where cricket is by large an alien sport. With
more than 400 players set to be drafted into these teams to play
official domestic cricket for the very first time in their lives, Minor
League Cricket is set to galvanize the US cricketing community like
never before.
© Cricbuzz
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