News Roundup: Cricket - April 01, 2025
Here's your AI-curated news roundup for today:
1. Cricket’s mammoth Indian Premier League
Source: Reuters
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is cricket's first franchise style league. A franchise sports league is a tournament where teams are run like a business. Leagues like soccer's Premier League in England and basketball's National Basketball Association are domestic tournaments.
2. England cricket team-mates welcome new baby boy with adorable photo
Source: The Mirror
Nat and Katherine Sciver-Brunt have welcomed their first child. The former England team-mates announced in September that they were expecting a baby in 2025. Katherine, who retired after taking a record 335 wickets for England, became pregnant. The announcement prompted congratulations from cricket stars around the globe. India star Yastika Bhatia said "Congratulations" along with a number of loving emojis. Ex-England captain Heather Knight simply responded with a heart. Katherine Sciver-Brunt and husband Theodore have announced the birth of their child. Katherine had reservations about going through pregnancy during her career. She said she was more likely to carry a child after she has retired. “It’s such a great honour that I can one day share with my children. When I received my letter I have to say I was quite emotional," she said.
3. Major League Cricket coming to the Oakland Coliseum for historic June tournament
Source: The New York Times
Major League Cricket will host a nine-match event at the Oakland Coliseum. It is the first time MLC has hosted matches in California and Florida. The 34-match schedule is its biggest so far and the largest top-tier cricket schedule ever hosted in the U.S. MLC has six teams, including three West Coast clubs. More than 100 million people streamed MLC matches or watched them on television last year. Cricket is the second-most followed sport in the world. The MLC event comes to the Coliseum during a transitional period for the venue. The Oakland Raiders moved to Las Vegas ahead of the 2020 NFL season and the Oakland Athletics left the Coliseum at the end of the 2024 MLB season. The Oakland Coliseum has been an appealing target for those interested in hosting major cricket events in the U.S. Grave said the ICC was close to an agreement to have the Coliseum host 2024 Cricket World Cup matches before the negotiations fell through. The San Francisco Unicorns will play matches in Oakland for the first time. The Unicorns feature several internationally renowned cricket players, including Haris Rauf and Jake Fraser-McGurk. The Coliseum has the largest baseball playing surface in the U.S. and can therefore be most easily converted into an international standard cricket field. San Francisco Unicorns CEO David White spent last Saturday at the Roots home opener and was thrilled with the atmosphere. Cricket utilizes a 22-yard strip called a wicket that will need to be “dropped into” the Coliseum playing surface. The wicket is currently in Nassau County, N.Y., where it was most recently used at the World Cup. The strip, which sits on a metal plate, will be trucked out to Oakland in two pieces. “I do feel like there’s a strong appetite to learn it,” White says. “There (are) obviously some nuances within the rules, but when you see exciting things happen, that tends to excite people.”
This roundup was automatically generated by SmartScrapAI
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