Associate Cricket action across the globe in 2020 and 2021 took to new heights with consistent live streaming efforts made by cricket boards and the commercial partners enabled the globe to see them live on streaming services/devices. Yet, so much coverage is still not reaping any benefits for the players, as they keep going unnoticed for global franchise T20 leagues.
Many players from Associate boards consistently have been registering themselves for the T20 franchise leagues across the globe, but when it comes to auction or draft process, the final chosen squads are always deprived of names from these nations. Since ICC has made the T20I status uniform across all member boards, every nation players now have an official “record” in one format in all major online databases maintained by scoring platforms and other websites, access to information about these players is not something the franchise analysts cannot find, study and perhaps take a liking to.
Whenever a player draft list for a major T20 league is announced, there is enough interest in the media about who the players from the Associate members are and this interest has taken a very long time to gather and sustain. Many players after preliminary list are even part of the final auction or draft selection process as well, yet the opportunity to showcase their talent on a global platform is still something that is being not taken up by the franchise owners across the globe.
Yes, the likes of Sandeep Lamichhane of Nepal and Timothy David of Singapore are the two prominent names going today as far participation in global leagues is concerned, but there is also an abundance of talent that is still not getting noticed. The 2019 Global qualifiers for 2021 Men’s T20 World Cup was well televised, and the recent accolades achieved by players from Oman, Namibia and Scotland in the T20 World Cup was much discussed in the social media platforms and mainstream print media as well and one hopes that players from these three countries at-least get chosen in player draft/auction process in this year’s franchise tournaments across the globe.
