‘Future of America’s cricket league bright...NRIs, passionate about the game, are good at professionalising sport’

US has performed extremely well in T20 World Cup 2024. In July, Major League Cricket’s (MLC) second edition will be held. How do you think the two events will impact the game in US?In US, the top four sports are baseball, basketball, American football and ice-hockey. That’s where the multi-million-dollar salaries are. Below that comes mixed martial arts, which has become very popular among the young, including women, and soccer (football). Then there’s rugby, lacrosse, and of course, cricket. The interesting thing is that IPL franchisees Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders have bought teams in MLC. BCCI has a vested interest in making them succeed. This is different from other cricket leagues as in South Africa. In US, the Indian diaspora and all other cricket-playing diasporas can bring in a lot of money into the sport. Don’t think of cricket competing with NBA. Look at it as a semi-professional sport with a passionate audience. No American has the time and patience to understand the subtleties of cricket.An estimated 200,000 play cricket in 400 local leagues. Is it enough to run a sports league?America has a population of 330mn. My demographic of all cricket-playing South Asians plus those from other cricket-playing countries would be roughly 10mn. Think of it this way. Denmark has a successful pro-league football with 5.5mn people. Norway has one with 4.5mn and Portugal with 10mn. So, you can have a professional cricket league with 10mn. If you price tickets reasonably, people would love to watch MLC. There are enough players who have played semi-professional cricket elsewhere who can play for the national team. Saurabh Netravalkar is the best example. You can see how the US team has been embraced by Indians as their H1B team.So you are optimistic about MLC’s future prospects. Right?It will succeed because they are being clever about it. They are using the MLS (Major League Soccer) model to start with to build a fan base and making sure that wherever they have the ground they also have the licensing rights. In the 1970s, they had a soccer team, New York Cosmos, for which Pele played. They played on rented grounds and whatever they made from merchandising, a large chunk went to the owners. With MLS, which Sunil Gulati, an Indian, ran successfully for many years, they did the merchandising. It is the same thing with MLC. Indians are extremely good at professionalising sport. The Toronto cricket league used to be run by West Indians who ran it more like a social event than a serious cricket league, where you had jerk chicken and met dates.Enter the Indians! They set up matches and schedules and so on, and now you have a professional Toronto cricket league. The point is every cricket-playing nation, except India and to some degree Australia, needs money. Even Pat Cummins has signed a four-year contract to play for San Francisco Unicorns. If I were BCCI, I would send MS Dhoni and Sachin Tendulkar during the league on a four-week holiday to US, all expenses paid. Those are the stars whom the Indians of a certain generation want to see, it is nostalgia and it resonates. Once you get star power, you get crowds.India might bid for 2036 Olympics. Is it a good idea?It’s not a smart idea. Olympics are hugely expensive, costing an estimated $100bn. Rich countries don’t want to host Olympics. Super-rich Sweden turned down the offer to host Winter Olympics, saying they can’t afford it. Victoria in Australia refused to host Commonwealth Games for similar reasons. Olympics can bring you bad publicity. The moment you say we are hosting Olympics, world media pounces on everything scandalous and problematic in the country.India should try to host World Cup football. The games can be played at night and there’s no need to build major infra, unlike Olympics. WC stadiums don’t create infra white elephants. Football stadiums can be used by different teams, hold any event, from political rallies to music concerts. But remember that people aren’t going to come unless it is tourist-friendly. As a friend of mine says, India is for travellers, not tourists. You need to build a safe environment. Amsterdam has 900,000 people and gets 17mn tourists annually. India’s population is about 140cr and it gets about 11mn tourists a year. Think about that!