Immigrants, cricket and Europe: Can one league unite a continent?

After hosting the UEFA Champions League final in June, Spain will once again host a final on July 31. It will be another final to crown the champions of Europe. But this won't be a football game. This is the European Cricket League (ECL), which is currently underway in Spain. Eight different countries, which are usually united by football will vie for the crown of champions of European cricket via their clubs.A man who wears many hats, Daniel Weston went to Munich in 2007, with no intention of staying in Germany for very long. Hailing from Australia, Daniel had already fallen in love with cricket by the time he moved to Germany, having also represented Western Australia in age-group cricket. The Australian found a cricket club in Munich and played there for the better part of the next three years."Cricket has actually been in Germany since the 1800s," Daniel points out when asked about the Munich club. And he isn’t wrong. There used to be a unified body for football and cricket in Germany, the German Football and Cricket Federation (DFCB), which was formed in 1891. The cricket body later split in 1912, and since then the two sports have gone their separate ways in Germany.Daniel Weston(Germany): Daniel Weston playing for Germany.Like Germany, cricket was a fairly popular sport before the two World Wars in many European countries. Genoa FC and AC Milan (founded as Milan football and cricket club) are some of the famous examples of the historical roots of cricket clubs in Europe.In late 2016, after some years of working as a hedge fund manager, it was cricket that Daniel returned to, with a ‘hobby project’ called ‘German cricket TV,’ which eventually resulted in him founding the European cricket league.The idea was fueled by an influx of immigrants into Germany, many of whom hailed from Afghanistan and other South-Asian countries. "As soon as all the Indians and other South Asian immigrants came to Germany, all they wanted to do was play cricket. So what I did was, I started a Facebook page. We started creating live streams of cricket events throughout Germany. We ended up having 52 million views and we had 1.3 million followers on FB. We found there is a huge amount of cricket lovers in Germany but no one knows they really exist." Daniel told TimesofIndia.com.Impressed by the numbers, Daniel, who himself started representing Germany in 2017 as a cricketer, made the German Cricket TV project his full-time endeavour, leaving his work as a hedge fund manager. Daniel Weston and son: Daniel already preparing his son for a tryst with cricketIt was a chance meeting in 2018 with Roger Feiner, a former Broadcasting head at FIFA, that put Daniel on his future path. "Convinced" by the numbers of German Cricket TV and of cricket's potential in Europe overall, Roger introduced him to two of his colleagues, who worked with the UEFA Champions League's marketing team, Thomas Klooz and Frank Leenders. Incidentally, the three, Roger along with Klooz and Leenders, were looking for a new sport to introduce in the European market. In Daniel, they found their man."I was highly sceptical at first," Frank, who used to play cricket in his younger days in Holland, admits. "However, I was very positively surprised when I saw Daniel’s incredible track record with German Cricket TV. The numbers which he generated on Facebook and YouTube were by all standards incredible and convinced me about the concrete potential," Frank further told TimesofIndia.com.A league with a differenceAfter a month of brainstorming, researching and studying cricket across the globe, the European cricket league was born. It's a league with eight teams, divided into two groups, who will compete for the crown of Kings of European cricket. A total of 8 countries across Europe are represented through the clubs.The inaugural edition began on Monday (July 29) and is a three day league, with 17 matches. The final is scheduled for July 31. The eight clubs are from Spain, Romania, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Denmark and the Netherlands.With the plan firmly in place, Daniel decided to focus on the existing clubs in the European member nations."When you think about Europe, when you think about European sport, it’s all about community based-sports clubs. I think the franchise works in a place where the sports already exists, but in places where it doesn’t exist, you need a lot of clubs that are fighting to win," adds Daniel."It’s easier for a multi-sports club in Europe to start a cricket department or a cricket team. It means we don’t have to create anything new, we just need to create awareness about cricket."The organisers also want to focus on the European players who are "desperate" to play the sport, and unlike many leagues which employ marquee or icon players to grab eyeballs, are not planning to go down that path.Realising that perhaps T-10 is the format that is the "perfect duration" for the European fans to buy into, the group decided to hold the inaugural season in the format, with an aim of moving to T20s next year. For a league that wants to revive the cricketing culture in Europe, the participation of the native population in the sport remains the biggest challenge. To ‘wake up’ a continent, a lot more might be needed.At present, 55% of the players of the ECL squads are Asians living in Europe, with a high percentage of other players being Indians with European passports.Daniel believes this is where the true advantage of the multi-sports club will come to the fore. "Now there are so many natives seeing cricket for the first time because it’s being played alongside football and volleyball or handball. If a cricket club existed by itself, it wouldn’t have any interaction with the natives. If there is a club which plays 20 sports and cricket is a new one, it creates visibility. So many natives are now seeing cricket for the first time and enjoying it." "The ECL will only be successful if the 5-year-olds play the game." Daniel said.With a sport that is still in its developmental stage in the continent, infrastructure remains an issue.However, the organizers believe a prize-money based tournament such as ECL might push many more clubs to win it, which in turn, would push the government to get involved in providing the infrastructure."Like my experience with German TV, as soon as a team plays on a live stream, there is a huge amount of awareness. If a local team wins, it means the mayor wants to be there to congratulate the club. Then that multi-sports club can ask the mayor for a proper place to play," argues Daniel.The one thing that the ECL doesn’t need to worry about is commercial partnerships. Backed by heavyweights of sports marketing, in Thomas and Frank, it already has tie-ups with Kookaburra, broadcasting company NEP and othersThe growth of live streaming is also a relevant factor working in ECL’s favour. Broadcasting it across the world would mean the endeavour could grab more eyeballs than what might have been possible anytime before.