Major League Cricket’s Dallas-based team announced their team name, Texas Super Kings, along with the team coach and domestic drafted players, following the first MLC draft in history on Sunday, March 19 in Houston.
Texas Super Kings also announced their partnership with Chennai Super Kings, an Indian Premier League franchise cricket team based in Chennai, India, who will bring operational expertise and help Texas compete on the field.
The Texas Super Kings’ player roster features top domestic cricketers drafted on Sunday, including:
- Round 1: Rusty Theron
- Round 2: Calvin Savage
- Round 3: Lahiru Milantha
- Round 4: Milind Kumar
- Round 5: Sami Aslam
- Round 6: Cameron Stevenson
- Round 7: Cody Chetty
- Round 8: Zia Shahzad
- Round 9: Saiteja Mukkamalla
The team will be led by coach Stephen Fleming. Fleming is a former captain of the New Zealand national cricket team and head coach of Indian Premier League team Chennai Super Kings. He played in the first-ever Twenty20 international to be staged as captain of the New Zealand team in 2005.
Six MLC teams – representing Texas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C. – selected nine domestic cricketers at the draft, which was held at the Space Center Houston and telecast live across the globe.
Texans Anurag Jain, partner with Perot Jain and chairman of Access Healthcare, and Ross Perot Jr., chairman of the Perot Group, were among the investors in a Series A funding round that will help MLC build facilities across the country.
“Cricket is the second most popular sport in the world with a global fan base of around 2.5 billion followers, but there has not been an opportunity for the sport to grow in the U.S.,” says Anurag Jain, co-owner of the MLC Texas Super Kings. “We look forward to having a professional team in Texas for the passionate local cricket community to root for and to introduce the sport to new fans across the country.”