USA Cricket and American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) announced this week (7 July) the details of the official Player Registration process for Minor League Cricket, and gave a status update on preparations for the new league. The tournament, scheduled to be played later this summer, includes teams based in major metropolitan areas from New York to Los Angeles and would be a precursor to a full-scale “Major League” T20 franchise tournament scheduled in 2021.
Cricketers across the U.S. will have the opportunity to register for Minor League Cricket, and put their name forward for selection into a Minor League Cricket team for the upcoming season. The Player Registration process opened on Tuesday, July 7th, and will continue for four weeks until the registration deadline of Friday, July 31st, at Midnight PST.
The registration process is open to all cricketers based in the U.S. as well as individuals who live abroad and can legally reside in the U.S. for the duration of the season. All players who register by the deadline will be considered for the inaugural Minor League Cricket Player Draft.
The debut season of Minor League Cricket was due to take place earlier in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the postponement of almost all domestic cricket in the USA from early March onwards. ACE and USA Cricket have been working closely together throughout this period to plan for all potential scenarios and are continuing to assess the likelihood of any cricket activity for drafted Minor League Cricket players in 2020. The staging of any matches or organized team activities will be dependent upon the guidelines of the state and county jurisdictions in which teams are based.
The situation will be monitored on an ongoing basis and there will be a further update in 3 to 4 weeks’ time with the official plans for the inaugural season of Minor League Cricket.
Sameer Mehta and Vijay Srinivasan of ACE commented, “Our main aim with Minor League Cricket is to give a platform and opportunity for the best cricketers in America to showcase their abilities. We would like to call on cricketers across all 50 states to register now to have a chance of playing in Minor League Cricket via the first-ever nationwide draft for cricketers in the USA.
“We will only proceed with plans to run the inaugural edition of Minor League Cricket when absolutely safe to do so. We will defer any decisions until the next formal announcement towards the end of July.”
“USA Cricket would like to thank our partners at ACE for their efforts in establishing Minor League Cricket during what has been a very difficult time for the country,” said USA Cricket Chief Executive Iain Higgins. “The announcement of the Player Registration process is a positive and exciting step and we encourage all interested cricketers to register with Minor League Cricket as soon as possible.
“USA Cricket continues to defer making any final decisions in respect to rescheduling the Men’s 50-Over National Championships in 2020 and the domestic playing calendar for men, women and youth generally. We are hopeful that we will be able to reschedule some of our planned activities for 2020 and will announce those plans as soon as we can be definitive about them. In the meantime, our scenario planning continues to be integrated with ACE and Minor League Cricket in order to provide the best and well-coordinated playing opportunities for our domestic talent.”
Full details of how players can register can be found on the Minor League Cricket website at https://www.majorleaguecricket.com/minorleaguecricket.
John Stephenson
john@cricketinvestor.co.uk
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