Pat Cummins played in Major League Cricket (Photo by Francois Nel/Getty Images)
Like some of their famous Bay Area sports counterparts, San Francisco Unicorns might just have an edge in Major League Cricket through proximity and close links to Silicon Valley.
Ahead of the recent second season, where they finished runners-up, the Unicorns landed the biggest signature so far in the fledgling American T20 pro franchise league.
Star quick Pat Cummins, Australia’s Test and World Cup winning captain, signed a four-year contract with the Unicorns in a major boost for the credibility of the lucrative six-team competition hoped to stir interest in cricket in the world’s biggest sports market.
It was initially seen as a surprising move from the 31-year-old Cummins, who does not play much franchise cricket due to his enormous international workload. He only plays in the money-spinning Indian Premier League, where his recent deal was $2.4 million, and rarely suits up in Australia’s Big Bash League because of cricket’s increasingly congested calendar.
Pat Cummins plays in the Indian Premier League (Photo by R.SATISH BABU/AFP via Getty Images)
Like many of his compatriots, Cummins was lured to MLC. Not necessarily for the money – although the MLC does offer healthy remuneration in line with rival T20 leagues – or playing amid the bright lights of the American sports scene. But rather for exploring business interests, with Cummins attracted to the Unicorns in a bid to get a foot into Silicon Valley.
The Unicorns are the latest partnership between co-owners Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan. They were founding partners of early ecommerce company Junglee, which was acquired by Amazon in 1998 for $250 million. They also later founded Kosmix, which was acquired by Walmart, and were early investors in Facebook.
“That (Silicon Valley) was the reason we were able to get him,” Rajaraman told me. “We are a start-up league. The attraction to him is that it is easier way for him to get connected into Silicon Valley.
“He’s interested in technology and start-ups and so on. He’s already an investor in start-ups and he wants to expand that and connect into Silicon Valley. We’ve facilitated that and it was our promise to him to make that happen.”
With perfectly manicured hair, and thick glasses that makes him look like Clark Kent when he’s not playing Superman on the field, Cummins has been divisive for some of his compatriots due to his advocacy for climate change, a stance that Australia’s dominant right-winged Murdoch media pile into him creating a certain perception.
Unlike the traditional hard-bitten, beer-swigging, Australian cricketer, Cummins represents a more cultivated modern player that has smashed to bits stereotypes. Cummins took just four wickets from six MLC matches, but saved his best performance for the final when he dismissed compatriots Travis Head and Steve Smith.
“He’s a fantastic guy, amazing human and very, very, very sharp,” Ramarajan said of Cummins. “So happy that we had him on the team and so happy that I got to spend some time with him.
“He’s one of those guys, who just by his presence elevates the whole atmosphere of the team and it just lifts everyone.”
Cummins’ off-field attraction to the Bay Area is reminiscent of NBA superstar Kevin Durant’s famous move to the Golden State Warriors in 2016.
Kevin Durant speaks onstage during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017 at Pier 48 (Photo by Steve … [+]
The Unicorns have wisely decided to embrace Silicon Valley as an identity. Not just as a means of luring those wanting to expand their financial acumen, but also in the franchise’s approach to analytics and AI to evaluate T20 cricket.
“Silicon Valley is our brand,” Ramarajan said. “We used data and analytics quite significantly. We’ve been trying to push the envelope. Some of the success we had in assembling the team and decisions we made were backed by new data driven methods that we’ve been developing.
“That’s all part of our Silicon Valley brand.”
