by Rex Clementine
Cricket, they say, is a funny old game. Just ask Sir Donald Bradman, the greatest of them all, who fell for a duck at The Oval in 1948, finishing with a Test average of 99.94, four runs shy of cricketing immortality. The game’s fickle hand, its razor-thin margins and its eternal unpredictability are as relevant in the slam-bang world of T20s as they were in Bradman’s heyday.
Take, for instance, the pulsating final of the Major League Cricket in Dallas — a tale of two teams, one steamrolling to the top, the other sneaking in by the skin of their teeth and yet it was the underdogs who had the last laugh.
Washington Freedom, the form team of the tournament, had looked a cut above the rest. With Glenn Maxwell at the helm, they barely broke a sweat through the league phase, winning eight of their ten matches and becoming the first to book a playoff berth. Their qualifier was a mere formality, washed out without a ball bowled, handing them a free pass to the final.
In stark contrast, MI New York huffed, puffed and somehow squeezed their way into the playoffs. They won just three of their ten league games and were tied on points with Seattle Orcas. But as fate would have it, a slender Net Run Rate nudged them through the backdoor.
Once in the knockouts, though, they flipped the script. Two gritty wins later, they landed in the final, battle-hardened and brimming with belief.
Then came the grand finale, a match that would have made scriptwriters drool.
Set a target of 181, Washington Freedom needed just 12 runs off the final over. At the crease? Glenn Maxwell and Glenn Phillips, two of the hottest tickets in T20 cricket. Most would’ve backed Washington to romp home with a couple of deliveries to spare. The stars had seemingly aligned.
But cometh the hour, cometh the unknown.
With the ball in hand was Rushil Ugarkar, a 22-year-old medium-pacer who hadn’t bowled a single ball at the international level. It was David vs Goliath all over again. But this time, David didn’t just bring a slingshot — he brought steel nerves and a bag full of slower balls.
Ugarkar outfoxed Maxwell with a clever change of pace, then held his nerve as Phillips faced the final delivery. Six runs were all Washington could muster off the last overs. Twelve were needed. Game over.
A star was born under the Dallas lights. It’s a lovely ground which hosted several World Cup games last year and could go onto host more major cricketing events moving forward. The venue is a short ten minute drive from the place where President John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed.
As the dust settles on another season, Major League Cricket is proving to be more than just another franchise fling. At a time when even Full Member nations are struggling to sustain domestic leagues, MLC is punching well above its weight.
The secret? Backing from some of the game’s biggest stakeholders. Four of the six teams are owned by Indian Premier League franchises, while Washington Freedom, bankrolled by Indian-American entrepreneur Sanjay Govil, and San Francisco Unicorns, co-owned Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan, have adopted a methodical, no-nonsense approach.
Strategic partnerships with Cricket Victoria and Cricket New South Wales have further burnished their credentials — a sign that the league is more than just fireworks and fanfare.
With expansion on the horizon and world-class talent already queuing up, the USA is quietly assembling a cricketing juggernaut. The sleeping giant is beginning to stir and when it fully awakens, the rest of the cricketing world may well be forced to follow-on.
