It returns on February 7th this year. In 2018, Daniel WESTON, born in Australia but a player for the German national team, was inspired to create a competition on the same principle as football, where the champion of each country would face other national champions. As cricket is a little-known sport in Europe, one of the goals was to make it more visible. To do this, Weston worked with football professionals to create a product available for streaming.
Mission accomplished, as the streaming quality of the first edition, in Spain in 2019, was praised. The ECL sparked the enthusiasm of sports journalists and managed to attract internet users from 120 countries, with 140 million views.
Then Covid struck, forcing Weston to cancel the tournament in 2020 and 2021, even though he had convinced prominent European cricket countries like England, Scotland, and Ireland to sign up in 2019. This promised more media attention and a higher level of play.
Far from twiddling his thumbs, he contacted more European federations and nearly tripled the size of the tournament. Because the second stated goal was to revitalize domestic championships by giving them another reason to want to become: qualify for the Champions League!
In 2018, there were 8 countries (Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, and Russia). In a few days, there will be 29 countries and 30 teams, as the winner of the first tournament, the Dutch champion VOC Rotterdam, will return to defend their title.
And what about France? We will be represented again by Dreux CC, a club from Eure-et-Loir, but which plays in Île-de-France. A flagship club of the Super League, three-time French champion, with players in the French national team, it has 60 licensed players and 4 teams, and boasts, not without reason, of having « the most beautiful field in France. » In 2019, after two defeats in this tournament, against the Dutch and Danish champions (Rotterdam and Svanholm), they were victorious against the champions of Romania and Russia (Cluj and St. Petersburg). This did not allow them to qualify for the semi-finals, but they could leave with their heads held high as Rotterdam and Svanholm were the tournament favorites. The German club SG Findorff, finalist against the VOC, was the surprise of the ECL 2019, showing a rise in power of cricket in Germany, while the Danish and Italian championships are older and their national teams better ranked, shaking up and dusting off the hierarchy of cricket in Europe.
This time they are in Group A where it will be a challenge against the English and Danish champions, but the Austrian, Finnish, and Luxembourg champions should be within their reach.
This tournament, in a spectacular format rarely used, the T10 (10 series per team compared to 20 series in T20), sometimes gives outsiders the illusion that cricket here is professional. On the contrary, it is currently an amateur sport unknown to the general public and struggling to find fields. However, the ECL is a flagship event that shows that from Finland to Greece, via Spain and Croatia, cricket is indeed played in Europe.
Long live the Cricket Champions League, and go Dreux Cricket Club! Our champions play at 3 PM against the Austrian Cricket Tigers this Monday, February 7th.
James Worstead
