One of India's all-time best cricket players is headed to the United States.
Ravichandran Ashwin will join the San Francisco Unicorns for the upcoming edition of Major League Cricket. Ashwin is the first former Indian national team player to play in the U.S. league that was founded in 2023.
It is a notable moment for the sport in both countries, especially given that cricket will return for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles after a 128-year absence. Ashwin, 39, recently played in an exhibition in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that signaled that the move could be a promising one.
"Just looking at the reception that the Asian diaspora was able to bring for that game just showed me what the potential of American cricket could very well be," Ashwin told ESPN on Saturday. "It's very exciting."
Ashwin is one of the most decorated players in international cricket history. The bowler ranks eighth in Test wickets. He is second in Indian history in that category and helped the country win the 2011 World Cup, its first win since an initial victory in 1983.
Ashwin also has a strong following on social media, with 5.3 million Instagram followers, more than Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott (2.2 million) and New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge (2 million).
Ashwin joins other notable international cricket stars such as former South African captain Faf du Plessis, ex-West Indies star Kieron Pollard and New Zealand's Trent Boult who will have played in America's MLC. Ashwin was previously set to join Australia's Big Bash League but was ruled out because of a knee injury that required surgery.
"This will be the first time he's played in a major global franchise competition outside of India," MLC CEO Johnny Grave told ESPN." And for us to be the first league to attract a player of this caliber is a testament to how the league's developed over the last three years since it was launched back in 2023."
The six-team league that will play its matches in sites in Texas, Los Angeles and Oakland, including the final on July 18 at the Oakland Coliseum. It is the T20 version of the sport, which is roughly three hours and has become very popular around the world.
A semifinal match between India and England in the recent T20 World Cup boasted 320 million viewers on both digital and streaming platforms, according to the International Cricket Council. To put that in perspective, this year's Super Bowl had an average audience of 125.6 million viewers.
The appetite for cricket has grown in the United States, which co-hosted the 2024 T20 World Cup. India's win over Pakistan drew 34,028 fans in New York's Nassau County, the largest attendance for a cricket match in the U.S. Team USA also beat Pakistan that year in a major upset.
Ashwin noted that other players with Indian backgrounds or who played for youth national teams, such as USA captain Monank Patel and Harmeet Singh, have played in MLC. Ashwin has noted the number of Americans who have enrolled in his cricket academy, both in-person and virtually, a sign of the growing interest in the sport.
"The fact that there is so much interest from the kids and from a lot of people who have come and settled in America and showing so much interest towards the game, I just wanted to come and experience what it is going to look like when we turn up for the MLC," Ashwin said.
There is also growing corporate interest from major American investors. According to ESPNcricinfo, an ownership group that is led by Kal Somani and includes the Denver Broncos owner Rob Walton successfully purchased the Rajasthan Royals for $1.6 billion. The Royals are one of the teams in the Indian Premier League, the wildly lucrative T20 league that sold its streaming and TV rights for a combined $6.02 billion in 2022, according to the BBC. That deal comes ahead of cricket's inclusion in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, the first time the sport will be featured in the Games since 1900.
"All of this news flowed for the last few years has just meant that cricket is now more known to Americans," Grave said. "And certainly when we go around talking to business partners, leaders, countries, cities, people have at least heard of cricket now. It's certainly not an unknown sport here."
One of the reasons Ashwin will be able to compete in the MLC is because of his retirement from not only international cricket but also the IPL, where he played from 2009 to 2025. And he believes his participation comes at a very important time for the sport.
Historically, the Test format that can be played for five days has been the sport's ultimate version. But the shorter T20 format that is akin to a baseball game with 120 pitches per team has helped the sport grow with several international leagues.
Ashwin said he believes that the days of countries playing each other over several weeks in several versions of the sport "is going to be incredibly tough." And with the Olympics in two years, one of the world's biggest sports could be headed for even more growth.
"We are standing at one of the crux point for the game where it is fighting and fighting to break free in terms of globalizing the particular sport," he said. "So I think there will be a lot of freewill over the next decade in terms of how much people will want to engage and how many people will want to jump on-board."
