“There are too many of these cricket moguls who want to be rich. They want to be Lalit Modi. And they see an IPL In the United States as their ticket to being Modi. That’s what they want to reproduce here and it leads to bad decision making.”

Jamie Harrison, 2014

Every American has a dream of some sort. It’s a birthright endowed not just to every man and woman who was born in the States, but also those who moved there, who made an active choice to be Americans. Indeed it’s often migrants who dream harder and stronger than those born within the 50 states. Having bought into the idea of America, they are all too often uncynical, oblivious to the unfairness and exploitation that drives unfettered free market capitalism and how the odds are invariably stacked against them.

Every migrant is presented with a question—to what extent do you assimilate? Do you throw yourself unguarded into the melting pot, or retain a little piece of the old country in your new life? For migrants from South Asia and the Caribbean, one way of maintaining their identity is through cricket.

We have already seen how US cricket has what you might term a weak centre: USACA, a perennially cash-strapped governing body officiated by amateurs. But that weakness is a double-edged sword. The lack of strong direction (and funding) from a governing body, and its location within an entrepreneurial society has seen US cricket populated by a preponderance of cricket promoters, schemers and dreamers. Driven by their passion, and an often unstated desire ‘to give something back’ to the sport they remember from their youth, they come up with vehicles to sell, promote or enhance the game, or at least try to. Some of them have got off the ground, many didn’t. All were fuelled by a fervent hope that cricket could one day flourish in the United States and (though few would admit to it) a hunch that a pot of gold could be just around the corner. During the course of our travels we met quite a few of them.

Major League Cricket (2005)

Long before the giants of the IPL invested in the US (see chapter 11) there was a man named Bernard Cameron, who registered Major League Cricket as a company back in 2000. A bespectacled bohemian-looking Trinidadian who had seen the world as a musician before he had made his money on Wall Street, we met in his office in Brooklyn in November 2005. It was an exciting time for him—a few weeks later we would launch a new tournament in Florida with six teams representing the states of Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Washington, Pennsylvania and Virginia. This would be known as the Sir Clive Lloyd Cup—Cameron had inveigled the ex-West Indies captain into supporting his project - as we would later discover quite a few US cricket entrepreneurs would have a West Indies legend as a mascot.

The major league itself was supposed to have commenced in 2007, with eight teams based on states. There was talk of a programme for youth cricket, National Cricket Centres, an MLC coaching certification, umpire’s certification, a National Cricket Academy and a goal of developing a team that could qualify for the 2011 World Cup. Big plans. None of which ever came to fruition. But when we met him Cameron was personable and convincing. And like so many of his kind, dismissive of USACA...