The National Cricket League (NCL) launched last weekend just outside Dallas, Texas with a massive splash and stars all around.
The tournament’s opening match took place Friday evening October 4 between two of the league’s six teams: the Texas Gladiators, Captained by Pakistan legend Shahid Afridi and coached by Pakistan’s Moin Khan, and the Dallas Lonestars, Captained by Indian star Dinesh Karthik and coached by West Indies great Sir Viv Richards.
Other legends of cricket, such as Wasim Akram, Sunil Gavaskar and Zaheer Abbas, could also be seen roaming the grounds.
Following the match, fans were treated to an energetic concert by Hit Bollywood singer Mika Singh.
The previous day, the “60 strikes” (i.e. T10 format) league unveiled its dedicated ground, located at the University of Texas at Dallas, and created in partnership with the school.
And perhaps most notably, the day after launch, the NCL announced that none other than cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar had joined its ownership group.
In the minutes following this announcement the NCL app, which includes live streams of all matches, crashed due to a sudden spike in traffic, particularly from India.
Indeed, the defining characteristic of the venture, founded by Chairman and Texas businessman Arun Agarwal, is not just its ambition, but also the involvement of partners and personalities to back that.
How did this new star-studded tournament come to be and make such a major splash in such a seemingly short time?
Vision and ambition
The NCL is spearheaded by Chairman Arun Agarwal, an Indian-American businessman based in Dallas. While the tournament’s emergence might seem sudden, this was a long time in the making.
“The vision was simple,” says Agarwal. “Grow the game of cricket in the USA, while keeping the purity of the cricket, with a format which is friendly to American sports lovers.”
But the path from vision to reality took a couple of years and only started to truly materialize very close to launch.
Securing Haroon Lorgat
If there was a key moment that put NCL on the map and set it up for success, it was confirming Haroon Lorgat as Commissioner. This was announced in late September – just a couple of weeks before the tournament’s launch.
Lorgat, a native South African, has a stellar cricket administration pedigree. He was the ICC’s CEO from 2008 to 2012 and then CEO of Cricket South Africa from 2013 to 2017.
Lorgat also has a track record of innovation: as ICC CEO, in addition to overseeing three World Cups, he spearheaded the introduction of the Decision Review System (DRS), and expanding cricket in associate countries. Lorgat also always had a keen interest in the US and several trips to the US to try to stimulate the growth of the game.
Securing Lorgat’s involvement with NCL, however, was a multiyear process. It started with his meeting NCL’s CEO AZ Qasmi in the UAE. “I met AZ over a number of years when I was involved in the Abu Dhabi T10,” says Lorgat.
“He used to come and watch the games. He invited me to help him, on a sort of ad hoc basis. And then last year, when they were ready to launch, he said to me, don’t you want to formalize our relationship? So I went to Dallas, I met Arun Agarwal, and we struck up a good chemistry. Then when I was in Dallas two or three weeks ago, they said, don’t you want to take on a more formal role? These guys were now serious about it and it gave me the confidence to align myself with the title Commissioner.”
Once Lorgat was confirmed, though, the floodgates opened and key dominos started to fall. The first, and most important was Lorgat securing ICC sanctioning, which opened the door to star international players feeling secure committing to the tournament.
Agarwal emphasizes the major impact Lorgat has had: “he’s such a sweetheart and he’s so respected in the cricket world. I wanted our league to project being one of the best and someone like Haroon brings that expertise, he brings that knowledge, he brings the player relationships. And I’m so fortunate that he said yes.”
Tendulkar
If landing Lorgat helped put the NCL on the map, bringing in Sachin Tendulkar as a co-owner was a seismic event that vaulted the league to another level.
On how it happened, Agarwal says: “He saw our vision. He saw the vision was not just to make cricket into a business, but also to grow the sport. When he saw we were partnering with the university (University of Texas at Dallas), he saw that we are really passionate about growing the sport of cricket in the USA. And it was not easy to convince him as he’s very selective. There are 30 people waiting every day to ask him to participate in something. But I’m humbled. I’m honored that he’s part of our ownership group. And it makes us work harder so that we make him proud.”
Cricket + Coachella
Another critical aspect of the NCL strategy is to combine entertainment with cricket.
As Agarwal puts it: “I keep on using the term ‘cricket meets Coachella’ – bring the two religions together… sports and entertainment.
CEO AZ Qasmi, who has a three-decade long career as a promoter bringing Indian and Pakistani stars to tour all over North America since 1991, was the mastermind behind this:
“I wanted to bring the entertainment and the cricket together because it just makes it big,” said Qasmi. “If you look at the entertainment side and the cricket side, these days they go together. If you look at IPL, PSL, any big leagues, they entertain people.
“And that’s what we’re doing every day. There’s a 30, 45-minute performance by a Bollywood star or artist from Pakistan. It’s just amazing. The first day we had Mika Singh, we have Javed Ali, Nora Fatehi, Ali Haider, and Raga Boys performing. Bringing all this together with the type of players we have is unbelievable.”
Broadcast
Another key pillar of the NCL’s launch was securing leading broadcast partners such as ESPN, SONY Max, SKY, and Fox Sports.
It naturally helped to have a stellar group of players on the field. Besides Afridi and Karthik, global stars include: Suresh Raina, Shakib Al Hasan, Robin Uthappa, Tabraiz Shamsi, Chris Lynn, Angelo Mathews, Colin Munro, Sam Billings, Mohammad Nabi, and Johnson Charles.
It is obviously particularly helpful to have Indian stars in particular like Karthik and Raina, to help energize and tap into India’s massive cricket watching audience – something that no North American cricket league has been able to secure.
But even with all these factors, Agarwal said nothing was a given and the results ultimately came from “challenging the team. They kept on telling me, ‘it’s a first-time league and we can’t do that.’
“I said, I will not settle for mediocrity at all. And MediaPro, who is our production company, understood the vision and they came through.”
Director of Marketing and Branding Steve Smith, for one, is excited to capitalize on this broadcast reach both now and in years to come.
“The NFL has a market cap of $180-$200 billion with a viewership of roughly 400 million. Put that in perspective: cricket has 2.5 billion viewers. The opportunity is massive.”
Pulling together a first class operations team
In order to handle the league’s operations, the NCL recruited a Tournament Director with both global and North American experience: Jason Harper.
Harper is a seasoned executive who served a similar role for Canada’s GT20 tournament for many years. But equally important, he was the CEO of the CPL’s Barbados Tridents, giving him a unique perspective that most tournament directors do not have.
“Having been a team manager, CEO, and Tournament Director” is helpful, says Harper. “All those levels and inputs are different.”
That said, running a completely new tournament with this scale of star players still presents major challenges.
“It’s a real challenge. Generally, that quality of player for a first-time tournament is difficult to get. So when we saw the player lists and knowing what their expectations are and what they’re accustomed to in global cricket, then we had to raise our standards. We went from a local tournament to becoming an ICC-approved tournament, a USA Cricket-approved tournament!”
To meet this challenge Harper brought in two operations stalwarts from the USA Cricket world to help: Kirk Greaves and Kerk Higgins.
“For me, it’s all about the people and the processes.” says Harper. “If we have the right people, we can instill the right processes, we can get the right outcomes that we want.”
Greaves adds: “anything you do is about the foundation. If your foundation is strong you can build on that.”
Player satisfaction
The focus on player experience and satisfaction prioritized by Harper, Greaves and Higgins has clearly yielded results.
England’s James Fuller, playing for the Texas Gladiators, explains: “it’s absolutely awesome being here in Dallas. The people are so nice, the event’s being put on really well. And as a player – we’re all really enjoying it.”
We spoke to several other players participating in the tournament on different teams both on and off the record, and the feedback was universal: they are very happy with their experience.
Higgins, who has served as the long time Team Manager for the USA men explains: “Players are very important. (Taking care of them is) the only way you’re going to get them to come back to future tournaments. And for us, players are our priority.”
Promoting important causes
A final defining feature of the NCL is its commitment to societal causes.
First and foremost is their commitment to the environment and sustainability. A key partner of the NCL is SEE Holdings, a Dubai-based leader in sustainability to help NCL implement eco-friendly initiatives.
The NCL’s home cricket ground, at and created in partnership with the University of Texas at Dallas, was constructed in an environmentally-friendly way and the NCL has committed to becoming a carbon-neutral event by 2030.
As Lorgat says: “We’re mindful of climate change and all the implications that we see around the world. So sustainability is a pillar for us.”
In addition, the NCL is supporting other important causes, featuring different causes on different tournament nights. These include: Domestic Violence Awareness Night, Veterans Night, and Healthcare and Public Safety Heroes Night.
Given the NCL’s commitment to these causes, Agarwal recruited a media team not only versed in traditional broadcast and PR in sports and entertainment, but also social causes: Malini Basu, a former NBC and ABC News reporter and anchor with extensive government relations experience, and Samantha Wierick, a film and theater producer and documentarian with strong Hollywood ties.
Long time horizon, immediate impact
The NCL team, under Agarwal’s leadership, is thinking well ahead, planning up to 10 years into the future.
But for now, they are focused on delivering on the current first season. Said Lorgat on the day of the launch: “it takes a magnificent effort from a big team to get to this day. And here we are, ready to fire away.”
Wasim Akram, Pakistani legend, and NCL Mentor and Brand Ambassador summed it up: “this sport is ready to take on America, and this is a very good start by the NCL.”
Name of Author: Zee Zaidi
