The 12th edition of the ICC approved US Open T20 tournament, organized by Cricket Council USA (CCUSA), a professional sports management organization, will take place from Dec 15th – 20th, 2020 at Central Broward cricket stadium in Lauderhill, Florida. Unlike the previous editions where more than 20+ teams have participated, the 2020 event will be contested only between eight franchise based teams due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions on travel and quarantine rules.
The live scores will be available on cricketerbook.com and the matches will be broadcast live on maqtv.com.
Defending champions from the 2019 edition, Somerset Cavaliers, will be competing in the tournament against Faisalabad Falcons, Afghan Zwanan Cricket Club, Atlanta Param Veers, 22 Yards Zalmi, Punjab Blues, Brampton Pacers and SAMP Army. Chairman and CEO of CCUSA Mahammad Qureshi said “Due to the Covid 19 we have been forced to reduce the number of teams. We had 109 teams registering for the tournament but sadly we had to choose eight, which were the first set of teams that paid up their registration.”
Player registrations are being done in the month of October and November 2020, and over 300+ players have been listed in the player draft for the competition. The list includes players from domestic circuits in the USA and overseas professionals from Ireland, Scotland, Afghanistan, Namibia, Oman, Canada, Windies Islands, UAE and others.
Some of the player listed in the player draft are Aftab Alam and Batin Shah (Afghanistan); Andrew Balbirnie, Curtis Campher, Gareth Delany, Josh Little, Kevin O’Brien and Mark Adair (Ireland); Asad Zaidi, Cecil Pervez, Kanwar Mann, Muhammad Kamal, Ruvindu Gunasekera, Saad bin Zafar, Salman Nazar, Srimantha Wijeyeratne, Junaid Siddiqui and Shahid Ahmadzai (Canada); Delray Rawlins and Kamau Leverock (Bermuda); Hrishiraj Talukdar (Russia); Jatinder Singh, Fayyaz Butt and Muhammad Imran (Oman); Jean-Pierre Kotze (Namibia); Mohammad Ayaz, Muhammad Boota, Rohan Mustafa, Muhammad Usman, Sultan Ahmad and Tahir Latif (UAE); Pavandeep Singh, Syed Aziz Syed Mubarak, Virandeep Singh and Dhivendran Mogan (Malaysia), Craig Wallace, Saffyan Sharif and Michael Leask (Scotland), Ayo Mene-Ejegi (Nigeria), Ravija de Silva and Abdul Waheed (Kuwait) and Yoosuf Azyan (Maldives).
Somerset Cavaliers and Atlanta Param Veers will be a tough opponents for all the teams in the competition, considering them being part of the Minor Cricket League teams registered with USA Cricket, and have played exhibition games in the past few weeks in the T20 format. The previous editions of the tournament has seen many players from Full member countries like Pakistan, West Indies, South Africa and England play alongside players from Associate member countries like Scotland, Netherlands, UAE and others. Teams like Brampton Pacers from Canada and SAMP Army will be relying on their local talent in the roster, without going for any big-name International players.
As part of COVID-19 safety protocols, no crowd will be allowed to be in the stadium during the tournament match days, with only the players and organizers to be present at the venue adhering to safety measures put in place in accordance with ICC guidelines. The tournament will be live streamed on MaQTV network.
