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The Most Valuable Skill In American Cricket Has Nothing To Do With Cricket
DALLAS, TEXAS - JUNE 01: General view inside the stadium as USA fans hold up flags during the ICC Men's T20 Cricket World Cup West Indies & USA 2024 match between USA and Canada at Grand Prairie Cricket Stadium on June 01, 2024 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Matt Roberts-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
ICC via Getty Images
Faf du Plessis was born in Pretoria, South Africa. He captained his country in all three formats of the game. He led Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL after Virat Kohli stepped down, one of the most scrutinized captaincy positions in world cricket. He spent a decade at Chennai Super Kings, a franchise built in Tamil Nadu, India, with a fanbase that stretches across every continent where South Asians have settled.
He captains a team that did not exist three years ago, representing a city with no cricket history, for a franchise whose identity was forged in a country he has never lived in, leading players from ten different nations, in a league trying to do something American sport has never had to do: build a fanbase from scratch in a country that already has too many sports competing for attention.
If there is a more vivid example of a multi-nation, multi-ethnic, genuinely global enterprise operating in real time, it is hard to name one. And du Plessis is not a figurehead in it. He is the captain.
I spoke with him recently. He spoke like someone who has watched enough enterprises succeed and fail to know the difference between momentum and escape velocity.
He had been thinking about the greats – Brian Lara, Viv Richards, Lance Klusener. Players whose gifts were so complete that the format they played in could not fully contain them. "I genuinely feel sadness that those guys couldn't have the same opportunities that we have today." Then: "The young guys now, the opportunity they are getting, they are probably going to sit in ten years time and say, poor old Faf didn't get the same opportunities that we did."
He is almost 42. He knows the window is closing. He is not panicking about it.
FT LAUDERDALE, FL - JULY 05: Texas Super Kings Batsman Faf Du Plessis (13) is seen batting the ball during the Major League Cricket match between Texas Super Kings and Seattle Orcas on Saturday July 05, 2025 at Central Broward Regional Park, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.(Photo by Chris Arjoon/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
That awareness, of the moment’s weight and its fragility simultaneously, is the most underrated quality in the room. It is the quality American cricket most needs from its leaders right now.
The Structural Advantage Nobody Is Talking About
Major League Cricket is not the first attempt to establish professional cricket in the United States. It is the first one with a structural reason to succeed.
The reason is the window. MLC operates in an exclusive period in the international cricket calendar when the world's top players, excluding Indian nationals contracted to the IPL, are available to compete. That exclusivity is the same principle that makes any platform defensible: control the conditions under which your competitors can access talent and you control the conversation. Du Plessis is direct. "This is an A-tier league. The window is what makes it that."
The scale of what is being built is real. A single India-Pakistan World Cup match in New York in 2024 generated a projected $78 million in economic impact for the metro region alone. MLC launched in 2023 with two venues and now operates across three, with the Oakland Coliseum joining Grand Prairie and Broward County Stadium for 2025, and Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Toronto on the shortlist for future expansion . The question is whether the cultural infrastructure will follow the physical one fast enough.
The LA ground being developed for the 2028 Olympics is currently difficult for batters. Du Plessis frames it as investment. Cricket returns to the Olympics for the first time in over a century in 2028. The ground being shaped now is not just a venue. It is the platform for a once-in-a-generation moment.
The Ceiling The League Has Not Named
The current MLC audience is overwhelmingly South Asian diaspora. That community is the reason the league exists. It is also, if left unaddressed, the reason it stalls.
Du Plessis is plain about it. "The diaspora gets you started. It does not get you to where you need to go."
He has a specific lesson for what changes that. In South Africa, the Mzansi League ran with the same players, same grounds, same schedule as what came after it. Stadiums were 40% full. Then the SA20 launched with IPL ownership and a different approach to visibility. Every TV, every billboard, every school, every radio station. Overnight, every stadium in the country was full. "I haven't seen anywhere that I've driven in America that there's a cricket tournament going on. It's not visible for local people. You really have to follow socials to know what's going on."
DELHI, INDIA - APRIL 27: Virat Kohli of Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Faf Du Plessis of Delhi Capitals prior to the 2025 IPL match between Delhi Capitals and Royal Challengers Bengaluru at Arun Jaitley Stadium on April 27, 2025, in Delhi, India. (Photo by Pankaj Nangia/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Du Plessis believes cricket needs to enter the American school system to build a local talent base. I also spoke with Shubham Ranjane , a domestic player who plays for the Texas Super Kings and has built his career inside the MLC system, moving from India to compete professionally in a country where most people cannot explain the sport to their neighbors. He named the most honest friction point: not enough outdoor practice. Cricket is an outdoor sport. The infrastructure for professional outdoor training does not yet exist at the scale the game requires. The gap between what the league pr...
South AfricanIndianDallasGeneralUSAICC MenCricket World Cup West IndiesCanadaGrand Prairie Cricket StadiumTexasPhotoMatt Roberts
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