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.
Cut to 2025, and the opportunities have definitely increased with the likes of International League T20 (ILT20) and Major League Cricket (MLC) being staged now, and Global T20 Canada (GT20 Canada) also keeping afloat. These remain the major events, where the players from Associate member countries are seen the most now. The opportunity is definitely there now, with most of the Franchise teams taking part in ILT20 and MLC being owned by Indian Premier League (IPL) investors, and getting the access to get noticed and then get picked through the auction process for future editions.
What is still a mystery is the fact that most of the matches/tournaments played now as part of ICC Qualification pathway for Cricket World Cups and T20 World Cups are regularly streamed across ICC TV app and Fancode app for Indian sub-continent, and the amount of data for the players are readily available to be accessed through major Cricket news publications and Cricket score databases. Yet, there seems to be gap that needs to be looked at, when it comes to analysts from major Franchise Leagues across the Globe accessing them and tracking their available video clips to make decisions about the players who register themselves for auction process or draft process.
