The Mumbai Cricket Association believes the success of T20 Mumbai is going to revolutionize the domestic circuit cricket.
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The inaugural edition of the T20 Mumbai league was held in March last year to great success with fans in the several thousands attending the final at the iconic Wankhede Stadium.
Along with giving a brilliant pedestal for the fringe city cricketers to play alongside the likes of Suryakumar Yadav and Shreyas Iyer, the acclaim of the tournament helped create a strong blueprint for franchise-based T20 tournaments in the domestic circuit.
“T20 Mumbai has been established as a brand in national cricket,” declared Mumbai Cricket Association committee member Ganesh Iyer. “The models elsewhere were for smaller tournament models, with T20 Mumbai being probably the first mega T20 event by an association.
“I don’t think any inaugural T20 tournament in India has had such a strong fan base, such a strong spectator interest and a wide television coverage; and to top it all some quality games,” he pointed out. “Looking at the growth, I envisage it to be the next best thing in limited overs franchise cricket after the Indian Premier League.”
The T20 Mumbai league has been a cherished dream for the MCA; and has been something that was in the pipeline for nearly half a decade before finally coming into fruition in 2018.
“The idea behind T20 Mumbai has been brewing since a long time, because we wanted to support our players who are playing in the elite tournaments or the Kanga Cricket League so that they will get a better exposure,” said Naveen Shetty, also an MCA committee member.
After a successful first season, the organizers of the tournament from the MCA feel that T20 Mumbai can now serve as a perfect launch pad for players from the city to get into the Indian Premier League.
“Mumbai is the cricketing capital of India and it needed this because by that time the IPL had got into its fifth and sixth edition, our Mumbai cricketers were not getting a lot of exposure in the IPL because there was no platform to showcase their talents,” said Iyer.
Last season’s prolific performances helped local players like Shivam Dube, Shashank Singh and Shubham Ranjane pick up lucrative IPL contracts. This season even more fringe players from Mumbai can make their mark on the cricketing fraternity when the league returns on the 14th of May.
