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Phoenix, Arizona, May 15, 2010

 

 

MetroStars Cricket club, the biggest cricket club in Arizona has been organizing day-night cricket tournament in Phoenix, AZ  since 2001.

 

The club's masterminds - Mahesh Naik (founder) and Vivek Govekar - started pondering an idea that the latter had envisioned after looking at the success of IPL and various regional T20 leagues in India.

 

 

The idea was to have premier cricket players from Arizona play in highly competitive T20 tournament and usher in the concept of team auctions and player auctions into Arizona's regular club-based cricket season.  The two organizers worked around the clock to convert this idea of combining recreational weekend cricket and fantasy sports team ownership into a reality.

 

On May 15th, an auction was held to sell 5 teams to interested owners who will manage the teams that comprise the Arizona Premier League (APL) - a premier T20 day-night tournament. 

 

All cricketers in Arizona were given an opportunity to register to play in APL.  Owners were given an assurance that 40% of the profits going to winning team and 20% going to runners up.  Players get a chance to play in a top-tier tournament without paying a single penny and the potential of getting paid by owners depending upon the success of this new format.

 

The auction was extremely successful and yielded thousands of dollars, well beyond everyone's expectations.  Each owner was given fantasy money that was proportionate to what they actually paid to buy a team. 

 

The following weekend, owners used that money to acquire players, each of whom had a notional price.  Salary caps, bidding caps and player trading was introduced and team owners went in high-gear with planning and strategy.  Five top players who attracted the highest bids were assured 10% share of profits.  Auction was held in highly professional manner using software tools developed specially by Vivek Govekar.

 

 

What APL has achieved is a sign of things to come, especially for the T20 format in Arizona. APL has managed to forge alliances between clubs who generally play as rivals in regular leagues. Players from different clubs have instantly joined together to provide their owners every chance to win a trophy and 40% bonus money. Owners are taking pride in providing best possible facilities to their players with an eye on luring them for next season.

 

A complete software toolkit along with auction automation, player registration and format/rules templates are being made available by APL to leagues in USA that want to roll out this phenomenal format.

 

Please visit APL's website for more details.

 

 

Mahesh Naik, mahesh_124@yahoo.com

Vivek Govekar, viv_0211@yahoo.com