In mid-February 2025, I met Abhishek Bachchan, one of Hindi/Indian cinema’s leading stars and the son of legendary actor, Amitabh Bachchan.
He was networking in London as the England and Wales Cricket Board was auctioning off equity stakes in The Hundred. Alongside him were Priyanka Kaul, Dhiraj Malhotra and Saurav Banerjee. Together, they had established Rules Sport Tech, a private limited company, headquartered in Haryana, India, to create a European T20 Premier League, or ETPL. This was to be based on a partnership between the national cricket boards of Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands. It had recently been sanctioned by the International Cricket Council.
The ETPL was scheduled to start in August 2025, with six teams based in six cities. When I met Bachchan six months earlier, I did feel that he and his team had their work cut out to achieve that aim. This proved to be the case as the launch was delayed for a year, but this provided time to refine their plans and attract impressive investors.
In January 2026, the ETPL announced the identity of the first three franchises based in Amsterdam, Edinburgh and Belfast. Former Australian captain, Steve Waugh, is among those owning the Amsterdam Flames franchise, which will have Australia’s Mitch Marsh as captain and Steve Smith in the squad. The Edinburgh Castle Rockers franchise has a strong New Zealand influence, owned by former New Zealand players, Kyle Mills and Nathan McCullum, while current New Zealand white ball captain, Mitchell Santner, leads the team. Glenn Maxwell, who played 279 ODI and T20I s for Australia, scoring almost 7,000 runs, will co-own and captain the Belfast Wolves. Kevin O’Brien, a legendary Irish cricketer, will be the coach. It is understood that each of the three franchises were sold for $14.9 million over a 10-year horizon.
It was three months later that the identity of the other three franchises was revealed. On April 20, came the Glasgow Mugafians, named after the Indian-based Mugafi Group, its founding partner. The franchise will be led by Tansha Batra, head of partnerships and brand at Mugafi. The legendary West Indian cricketer, Chris Gayle, joined as co-owner and global brand ambassador. On April 28, the franchise rebranded to Glasgow Cosmic and then announced Matthew Hayden as co-owner and coach on June 9. The fifth franchise, the Rotterdam Dockers, was revealed on April 30, with a predominant South African ownership and management. Jonty Rhodes, once considered to the world’s finest fielder, has linked with Faf du Plessis and Heinrich Klassen as the ownership group, with Du Plessis as captain and another South African, Adrian Birrell as coach. On May 11, the final franchise was announced as the Dublin Guardians, with Rahul Dravid leading an Indian consortium.
The involvement of Dravid to join other legends of the game in the ETPL is a major coup for ETPL. He played 164 Tests and 344 one-day internationals for India and coached the national team between 2021 to 2024. His captain will be the former Indian spin-bowling all-rounder, Ravichandran Ashwin, who retired from Test cricket in December 2024 and stepped away from the Indian Premier League last summer, making himself available to explore the world of global franchise cricket. Shortly after Ashwin’s acquisition, another former Indian star joined ETPL’s ranks. On July 30, Ajinkya Rahane, who played in 195 matches for India, as well as captaining the Test team, announced his retirement from cricket. Steve Waugh was quick to spot the chance. He called Rahane and one week later he signed for the Amsterdam Flames as a marquee player.
ETPL’s management has devised a set of regulations to control how the franchise squads are constructed. The overall aim is to balance international experience with the continued development of European cricket. This means that local players and emerging associate talent receive meaningful opportunities to compete alongside some of the world’s best cricketers. Each squad has a maximum of 17 players. Different player categories were determined.
First, were local players affiliated to Ireland, the Netherlands and Scotland, two of whom were direct picks, with others picked by draft. Each squad must have between six and eight local players. Second were European Associate players, other than those from the Netherlands and Scotland, with a minimum of one and a maximum of two. Third were Global Associate players, outside of Europe, with a minimum of one and a maximum of two. The fourth category was overseas players affiliated to ICC full members, other than Ireland, up to a maximum of seven.
It was also decided that the selection of local talent should be based on a structured draft player system rather than an auction. The draft, held on July 2, provided all six franchises with an equal chance to secure players eligible to represent Ireland, the Netherlands and Scotland. Thirty-six players were picked, 12 from each of the three countries. They were drafted across six rounds, with each franchise selecting six local players. The draft choices showed clear regional preferences. In each starting X1, there must be a minimum of five local players from the Netherlands, Scotland or Ireland, plus a maximum of four international players, leaving room for global and associate players, according to match circumstances.
On the surface, this arrangement should ensure the stated aim of providing meaningful opportunities for local talent. If the example of The Hundred is anything to go by, in which local talent was underused, this is not guaranteed. It will be an important criterion by which to judge the success of the inaugural ETPL, which is scheduled to start next week on Aug. 26, ending on Sept. 20.
The draft system also controls player salaries. At auction, players are paid according to how much a franchise is willing to bid for them, whereas ETPL salaries are fixed according to the round in which a player gets picked. In Round One, the salary is $55,000. It then descends in $5,000 steps down to Round Eight at $20,000. No team can offer a player extra money to convince them to sign. Each franchise has a tournament salary budget of $1.48 million. Understandably, a lion’s share of that goes into signing marquee players.
Squads are now almost complete. International players from ICC full members are almost entirely from either Australia, England, South Africa or New Zealand. Fifty percent of those from non-European associate nations are from the US, with two players from each of Namibia, Nepal and the UAE — Khuzaima bin Tanveer and Muhammad Waseem. In the European associate nations category, there are four players who play for Italy and one for Greece. Matches will be broadcast by JioStar across its linear television and digital platforms in India. The official linear broadcast partner is TNT Sports, with HBO Max serving as the digital platform across the UK and Ireland. Willow and Cricbuzz will deliver exclusively across television and digital platforms in North America, MENA and Southeast Asia.
The tournament will be played in two halves. All six franchises will play a 30-match round-robin league phase between Aug. 26 and Sep. 6 at Voorburg in the Netherlands. After that, the top-four-placed teams will move into a knockout stage that culminates in the final at Malahide, Dublin. The tournament breaks new ground for cricket in Europe, outside of England and Wales. Its founders should be very proud, even if somewhat exhausted.
