{"id":20930,"date":"2023-03-23T09:45:33","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T14:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=20930"},"modified":"2023-03-23T09:45:33","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T14:45:33","slug":"gworkas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2023\/03\/23\/gworkas\/","title":{"rendered":"Gworkas!"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>These last few years have seen a proliferation of new Cricket Leagues\u2014all in the short form of the game, which turns out to be hugely successful on television. Your Humble Blogger has a lovely streak of choosing what turned out to be the worst team to follow in three consecutive new leagues\u2014the New England Eagles of (US) Minor League Cricket, the Welsh Fire of the (UK) Hundred, and now the Gugarat Giants of the (India) Women\u2019s Premier League. Ah, well. Fourth time will be the charm, or else, you know, it won\u2019t.\r\n<p>That fourth time will be (US) Major League Cricket, a three-week, six-franchise tournament in July 2023. The franchises will be named for various US cities or states, but as far as I can tell, all the games will be played in Texas, so the franchise locations will be entirely notional. As well, three of the franchises will be named after their parent franchises in the Indian Premiere League, so they are barely even notionally local. The other three teams do have international franchise partners, but at least have their own local-themed, if terrible, franchise names.\r\n<p>Actually, let\u2019s go through the teams and their partners.\r\n<p><ul><li><strong>The Seattle Orcas<\/strong>: their partner is the Delhi Capitals of the India Premier League (IPL), and their big-name US investor is Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO), who was also a big early funder for Major League Cricket. They got first pick in the domestic draft and chose Harmeet Singh, who was a teenage phenom for India but washed out in the IPL, and was considered a bad character (although he was cleared of match-fixing charges) and eventually moved to the US, where he\u2019s hoping for a second act at 30 years old. Hm. They have the biggest international signing so far, with the great (and also thirty-year-old) Quinton de Kock. At any rate, I harbor no ill will against the city of Seattle, and it\u2019s a pretty reasonable team name with local color, although I have difficulty saying \u201cGo Orcas!\u201d<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>The DC Freedom<\/strong>: I think Washington stole the Philadelphia team, which would be enough reason to root against them, but the name is another. Also, their major US investor is Sanjay Govil, who apparently makes his money from the interaction of business computer systems and the health care industry. Their franchise partner is Cricket New South Wales, of Australia\u2019s Sheffield Shield competition, which isn\u2019t a strike against them, particularly. Their first-round draft pick was the South African wicketkeeper Andries Gous, not quite thirty years old, recently retired from first-class play, and they\u2019ve also signed Anrich Nortje, the South African quick bowler, and the genuinely exciting Sri Lankan all-rounder Wanindu Hasaranga.<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>MI New York<\/strong>: Their franchise partner is the Mombai Indians, which means they\u2019re actually called\u2026 the Mombai Indians of New York? Really? This is actually the closest team geographically to YHB\u2019s New England home, and I would consider potentially rooting for a New York team under those circumstances, but can I root for the Indians? Also, their corporate owner (who also owns MI Cape Town and MI Emirates) is a petrochemical company. Their first-round draft pick is batsman Steven Taylor, who played as a teenager for the US team, and then in the Caribbean professional league, and is now almost thirty. No international signings yet.<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>The San Francisco Unicorns<\/strong>: I guess I like that they\u2019re trying with the name? But since their franchise partner is Cricket Victoria, why not be the San Francisco Victorians, and use one of those great painted Noe Valley houses on their logo? Also, let\u2019s be clear, the team represents Silicon Valley, not the City. The big-name investors are venture capital guys Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman. Their first-round draft pick is Corey Anderson, formerly of New Zealand, who has been playing in the \u201cLegends League\u201d after retiring from first-class cricket. Their big international signing is Aaron Finch, who was the captain of Australia not so long ago and is now 36, and they have also signed the all-rounder Marcus Stoinis, who is only 33 and was playing for Australia in the last year.<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>The Los Angeles Knight Riders<\/strong>: This is a terrible name, yes, but they are stuck with it, since they are owned by the Kolkata Knight Riders (IPL), which is itself owned by Jay Mehta, whose money comes from\u2026 sugar, cotton, cement, consulting, finance and evidently everything else in the whole world. Their first-round draft pick is fast-bowler Ali Khan, who plays for the US national squad, and has played for a variety of teams around the world. He\u2019s 32. No international signings yet. Obviously, I will be rooting against the LA team.<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Texas Super Kings<\/strong>: This is another terrible name inherited by the parent franchise, the Chennai Super Kings, which is owned by India Cements, Limited. Texas investors are Anurag Jain and Ross Perot Jr, which again is interaction of business computer systems and the health care industry. Their domestic first-round is Juan \u201cRusty\u201d Theron, formerly of South Africa, who retired from first-class cricket in 2015, but has been playing for the US national team since 2019. No international signings yet. I am not in general opposed to rooting for a team based in Texas, although I have never actually done so.<\/li><\/ul>\r\n<p>Now you\u2019re up to date. The theme for the domestic signings is, unsurprisingly, former teenage phenoms who never quite became big stars and are now probably past their athletic prime. International signings as well seem to be mostly older players who were never (with the exception of Quinton de Kock) quite at the top. There may be some bigger names coming, of course\u2014there is a rumor that English players who are under contract to County teams may be willing to sign if their team drops out of contention in June\u2014but that\u2019s what I\u2019m seeing so far.\r\n<p>I think, at this point, I am inclined to throw in my lot with Seattle, if I can make that support sound a little less like \u201cgworkas!\u201d\r\n<p><I>Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I><br>-Vardibidian.\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In which Your Humble Blogger isn't sure if it still counts as pathetic  Anglophilia, if it's mostly coming from South Asia.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[191],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglophilia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20930"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20932,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20930\/revisions\/20932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}