The Emirates T20 Series is now a reality!

After a lot of speculation for over two to three years, the ‘desert league’ is now a reality. According to a few reports, the owners of Mumbai from the Indian T20 League have shown interest to form a team and Shahrukh Khan, owner of many franchises from across the globe, is also interested in buying a team in the tournament.

Other than that, the Glazers family is also interested in owning a team. The Manchester United owners missed out on owning a team in the Indian T20 League but want to own a team here. This also shows that they are heavily interested to invest in Cricket and this will only help cricket to grow in the United States of America as United owners are from that area.

Other than that, Capri Global and Delhi’s co-owner Kiran Kumar Gandhi are also interested in owning a team in this tournament. Other than them, the sixth team will likely be coming from the Australian franchise, Sydney Sixers.

Sundar Raman, the former Chief Operating Officer of the Indian T20 Series is heading this tournament and he is confident to launch this tournament as early as in January. An industry executive who’s tracking the development told TOI, “January is a great time to play cricket in the UAE. The destination caters to multiple time zones, specially in the west. It suits prime-time in the Indian sub-continent very well, as we have seen in the last two Indian leagues and recent T20 World Series that were played here”.

The Chennai franchise was also interested to own a team here but they backed out after the government of this gulf country got involved. Raman told TOI, “As things changed and the cricket board of Emirates took charge, Chennai opted out. But Mumbai giving their consent was a huge shot in the arm for the organizers of the league”.

Thus, as things stand, Emirate is all set to host their own T20 League. Now, the Indian board, which has an extremely good relation with the Emirates board will allow their players to play in this tournament or not is something every Indian fan is waiting to see. Specially after few legends openly said that the board should allow them to play elsewhere