‘What's cricket? Do you sit on a horse?' - Liam Plunkett recalls early days in the US and rise of MLC

Time of India

2 days ago

Liam Plunkett (Image credit: MLC)
Liam Plunkett
is no stranger to cricketing revolutions. A 2019 World Cup winner with England and one of the sport's seasoned globe-trotters, Plunkett is now at the forefront of a new frontier: cricket in the United States.
As a senior figure with the San Francisco Unicorns in Major League Cricket (MLC), he has embraced the dual role of player and ambassador, helping build a foundation for the sport in a country still learning its cricketing ABCs.
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Plunkett's deep connection to the US goes beyond cricket — his American wife and long-standing ties to the country have made the transition seamless.
But what drives him now is the chance to shape something meaningful from the ground up. From coaching kids to helping launch coaching pathways through his online platform, Plunkett is laying bricks at every level — grassroots to elite.
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In this wide-ranging interview with TimesofIndia.com, he opens up about the evolution of cricket in America, the challenges of infrastructure and education, the vision behind the San Francisco Unicorns, and how data, heart, and hustle are shaping a distinctly American version of the gentleman's game.
Excerpts:
Q. You've been one of the early ambassadors for the sport in the US. What has the evolution of cricket been like, in your opinion, and has there been any culture shock since you arrived?
Liam Plunkett:
I've been coming back and forth for a very long time now, my wife's from America. So we're talking maybe 17-18 years ago that I've been back and forth. So in terms of me being here, it's been a slow and steady kind of integration.
So I'm kind of used to the culture, used to what's going on.
In terms of the cricket side of that, it wasn't until probably 12-13 years (ago) that I realised there was a big cricket presence here. I went to bowl at an indoor school before I was then going to play in a series with England in Sri Lanka. And then I found out it there was an indoor school here. There's 25 games here, 25 games here. And then I realised there's a lot of cricket here.
So that was very surprising to me.
And then, the last three years, this is my fourth year in the States now and I'm happy that I've been involved from the rookies coming through at a very young age all the way to a Major League now. It's been nice to see how it works, how the system works. And definitely over the last three-four years, things have progressed.
You can see that by Major League, the standard of cricket that is, the superstars that come across that are representing the franchises.
So it's definitely been an evolution. Obviously, the Cricket World Cup was in America last year, and we've seen the Eisenhower Park with that stadium.
And there was packed out crowds watching it. And obviously, India, Pakistan's always going to get them huge crowds in. But even the other games I went to, there was big crowds.
And obviously, USA cricket doing well, beating in Pakistan, beating Canada, and getting through to the Playoffs in the Caribbean.
But it's difficult, isn't it? Because I know the circles I'm with, everyone knows cricket, even in America. It's like everyone I associate myself with, cricket's growing, cricket's growing. And then you can go down the road and no one's ever seen the game. So it's like you're in their pockets.
Major League Cricket: Liam Plunkett on how cricket can boom in the USA
Q. You've played in the IPL, come from a country like England where cricket is extremely popular. And then you go to the US, where you have to explain the basics of the sport. How much of a challenge is that?
Liam Plunkett:
In terms of being here, in terms of the South Asian influence and the parents who've come across to work here and introduce cricket to the kids, they know the basics, they know what cricket is, they know how big cricket is, because it's passed down through the family.
So it's not really teaching these guys or girls what cricket is... It's like, 'Okay, well, this is a basic level. How can I help you step up?' Because a lot of people need that coaching education.
And that was one of my main aims coming over here after being here six months was how can I help the coaches improve.
Because you can't just do it as one person. You have to obviously have people in different venues, and how can we educate these coaches to be able to teach that, pass that through that pipeline? But there's so much here now where there's a lot of academies popping up left, right and centre who are teaching the kids, this is cricket, this is the basics.
And I think that's important. I think we don't forget about that.
We see in terms of the stadiums where people are playing at now in terms of Grand Prairie, the Oakland Coliseum, but let's not forget the grassroots, because in 5, 10, 15 years, they're the kids who are going to be taking our places.
Q. Do you recall a moment where you had to explain the sport, and you've been a little surprised by how challenging that could be?
Liam Plunkett:
When I first started coming across, when I was playing international cricket and I pop over here, maybe we had a break for four-or-five weeks and I come across to be with my wife - my girlfriend at that time - people would say, well, what's cricket? Do you sit on a horse? Are you hitting the ball underneath with a giant hammer? But yeah, you kind of explain it.
I kind of go by the rule: it's like baseball, but a lot better, a lot quicker. You can score 360. And yeah, a pitcher, even if he's having a bad day, he doesn't get thrown to the bullpen. He has to stay on the pitch and face the crowd.
I mean, my wife does a really good job of explaining it to Americans, to be honest with you. I normally pass that over to her. I'm saying you can break it down.
But a lot of people are very fascinated. And I think when people realise that's where baseball came from was cricket, right? It's like, this is where it first started.
And that's the America's oldest, newest ball game, right? That's the hashtag line.
People are very interested, especially in the Philadelphia area with the history in Philadelphia with the cricket clubs. And that history goes way back when. And you've got three beautiful old-school cricket clubs now in terms of Philadelphia Cricket Club, the Merion and Germantown Cricket Club.
So the history does go back here. You've even got a cricket museum down at Haverford College.
So it's nice that people know about it.
And you can say, well, 'Actually, cricket's been here for a very long time. It's just starting to pop again now'.
Q. Conventionally everyone thinks and knows the longer formats. How do you sell the T20 format?
Liam Plunkett:
When I'm explaining (cricket) to people, they might come back and say, 'Oh, isn't that game lasts five days and you can still draw a game?' I'm like, it is. But the way that the game's going, it's like each team gets to bat for 120 deliveries, that's got as many runs as they can.
And I'm guaranteed in baseball, you average about three, four home runs. In cricket, you probably see 25-30 sixes throughout. So you're always engaged in it.
My role is I'd love to educate more people and get them more interested in cricket before the 2028 Olympics, because I'm sure if that's shown on TV and you've got India playing a game, they'll see how big the crowds are and how crazy and lovely crowds are with cricket.
I mean, the short format's the way forward, especially here.
Q. How do you build the sport at the grassroots level? Which not only makes the sport pppular but also feeds into the MLC.
Liam Plunkett:
When I first came here, I think my role is like a Swiss Army knife. Because there's not enough people on the ground to do one thing, you have to kind of spread yourself thin a little bit. But my role was to be an Ambassador, play Major League Cricket, play Minor League Cricket, be like a national development coach, but also work in a local academy to help build that.
And kind of no fault of its own and just the nature of the beast is there's not many coaches who kind of know what they're doing. A lot of it was very helpful parents or helpful volunteers who were helping the kids. And I kind of thought, well, how can we improve this? And one of the reasons that I started Liam Plunkett Cricket, or LP Cricket, is because I want to educate the people to become coaches.
So we set up an online platform where you can go and do your coaching courses.
There's three coaching courses there. We want to be able to put through people, 'okay, let's do this properly.'
Because sometimes it's hard to get the coaching development from USA Cricket to come to your doorstep and to teach you. We wanted to put an online platform in place so people can start their journey and feel like they're getting heard and they're on a process. They can see themselves getting better and better and they feel like they're climbing up that ladder rather than do a course and sort of stall for a year or two before they get seen again.
So that was a part of what I was doing. Let's put a system in place. Let's get some coaches coached. Let's get these coaches out coaching properly. And then let's see how the kids can improve. So I've set that platform up. But also is having little franchises. I've got a couple of franchises now where we've got some really good stuff happening.
One of the guys who plays for LA, Corne Dry, he came across to Philadelphia and he's leading up one of them franchises there.
We've got a lot of kids coming through and it's great to see that coaching's getting done properly.
There's obviously great coaches in America. I'm not taking that away from anybody. I think there's some really good people who do some really good stuff. But it'd be good to get people through some sort of accreditation. 'OK, let's do this together. We're not trying to stream all over everyone. We want to collaborate and do this together.'
So that was kind of my aim, to get people in a system, to be here, to teach people. You've got a lot of good coaches also at rookie level, but have not experienced, especially in America, have not experienced what that professional environment looks like, what it takes to become a professional cricketer, what it takes to go through a system. I've been through a system since I was 13, all the way up to playing for England and still playing now.
So I've been through in and out of every different system. I've seen what a good and bad youth system looks like.
I feel like I can help build that here and collaborate with different people. As I said, I'm not here to be like, 'This is the one way. It's like, let's bring people together and do it properly' because in America, if you're trying to do things by yourself, it's not going to work.
Q. Another challenge is infrastructure. For a sport to become big, especially in the US, it needs to go through the NCAA system. It needs to be followed at the lowest level, but you need to have good grounds and stadiums. How do you work your way around that?
Liam Plunkett:
It's going to take time.
The guys who I know have said if cricket was played on a football field, then we'd be flying! But, you know, people only know this way. They've been playing on these AstroTurf wickets with dodgy run-ups and dodgy outfields for a long time, and they love the cricket.
But people are trying to build grounds. They're trying to put the right wickets in. They're learning from people's mistakes, and it feels like it's going in the right direction.
With MLC playing in some great venues, if you look in the last few years, Grand Prairie is one of the nicest grounds you'll play in.
I was there with San Francisco on a training camp a couple of weeks back, and it was immaculate. It was beautiful, right? So you could be dropped in. You could come from IPL and play on that, and this is really impressive in terms of the outfield.
I think it's just going to take time. You've got a lot of good parents who are reaching out to schools, and they're actually putting wickets in schools, and obviously in the outfields there, they're saying, listen, this is cricket.
We can build from this.
It's exciting. There's a lot of people involved, but it's just going to take time. And I think, hopefully, when people start coming together more and relationships keep building, there will be a pathway, and we'll get into colleges more.
But it's not an easy task to get that going straight away. Every other major sport here, they're so big and powerful that I don't think you're trying to compete with them.
You're just trying to say this is its own thing. It can be successful in its own right, and then you sort of drip that into high schools. But it will take a while, that's part of the journey. That's the exciting part.
Q. MLC have consciously kept focus on US market and audience, not pandering to the Indian TV share. What do you make of that decision?
Liam Plunkett:
If you've got Mumbai involved, Chennai involved, a lot of the IPL teams are involved.
So I mean, it's always going to be tricky no matter where you play in terms of the time zones and stuff. But in terms of being a good league, I think it is an amazing league.
If you think about the overseas players that are taking part in these competitions, then you look like last year, you've got Pat Cummins and Steve Smith, Glenn Maxwell, Andre Russell, some of the best players in the world. Indian players are obviously not allowed to be involved in that.
But in terms of recruiting the other best players, I think they're doing a great job.
And now you're looking at Grand Prairie, you've got Fort Lauderdale, and now you're going to be playing games at the Oakland Coliseum, which is going to be amazing. It's going to be different playing there.
I mean, we're trying to create waves, but we are attached to a lot of IPL teams. So that should give it some accreditation in terms of that part of the world, South Asia and India and stuff.
But that time is going to be difficult. Someone's going to be unhappy. So we're going to be playing at 6am, at 10pm. But that's for a higher pay grade than me to figure out, I'm afraid.
Q. You're part of a franchise that doesn't have an IPL affiliation, has a techie for owners, and they have a very strong inclination to using data for a lot of their research and player recruitment. Where do you stand on that?
Liam Plunkett:
It's got me in a tough spot here! (laughs)They're (Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan) very passionate.
They've done their research. They've got Victoria Cricket involved with the team. And then you've got Shane Watson's head coach and that coaching staff around that now.
And yeah, you've got the guys who I think class themselves as the mad guys in terms of the data analytics. But I think sometimes it works. They did well last year when we got to the final, we didn't quite creep over the line. I think they did really well.
They offered the coaching staff this is what we think is going to work.
This is what we think, in terms of data, what matches up, what doesn't match up. And I think they'll get all that information when it comes to Watto [Watson] and the team. And they'll take that information on board and then use it to (decide) how they pick their team.
As head coach and someone who has played a lot of cricket like Watto [Watson], he knows the game inside out. And sometimes you might get a gut feel of what you want.
So I think it's amazing that you can use that research but also have the experience and the class of Watto's brain, how it works in terms of a cricket level and picking teams, having them both together, it will work.
Q. What excites you about the potential of the Unicorns franchise and its place in American cricket's future?
Liam Plunkett:
I really enjoy the last three years, how we put the team together, how the guys have recruited, how the coaching staff works.
Sometimes being here the last few years, it's tricky because in terms of even the training, me being in Philly [Philadelphia]. But when you get there and you're in that environment, it's felt as professional as anywhere else in the world. It felt like I could have been dropped in an IPL team or I could have been dropped in a county or even in a Big Bash in Australia.
It feels like it's well put together. It's well organised. Whatever hurdles we've got in terms of what does that ground look like in terms of practice, what does that outfit look like? The guys have done an amazing job to bring everyone together.
They've selected the team well. They've given youngsters a chance. And it feels like a well put together organisation.