SerpApi.Org
Nicholas Pooran blew a kiss to his wife and daughter in the stands on reaching his half-century at The Oval, on the night that he completed a peculiar set.
Pooran travels the world playing blue and gold, and has now played for Reliance-owned franchises in the UAE (MI Emirates), South Africa (MI Cape Town), the United States (MI New York) and England (MI London). And yet, save for a season running the drinks IPL 2017, he has never actually played for Mumbai Indians themselves.
It is a bizarre situation, but one that is increasingly common. Rashid Khan has played for the same four 'MI' franchises and not the real thing; Ryan Rickelton is fresh off a stint with MI New York, having played for MI Cape Town and Mumbai Indians themselves earlier this year, yet found himself playing against MI London in Sunrisers Leeds orange on Tuesday night.
Highly-paid players may not mind, but the sport itself should. A decade ago, the notion of IPL franchises owning teams in multiple leagues felt like a dystopian prediction. It has quickly become the reality, yet cricket's governance continues as though nothing has changed, with each league left to make its own rules and player movement near impossible to track.
Cricket's administrators have largely washed their hands of franchise leagues, and left them up to the open market. It was hard to take seriously the ICC's announcement in June that its board had "expressed concern regarding [the] growing expanse of franchise cricket" shortly after the 19th season of the IPL, not least when its resolution was simply to form a committee.
The concept of players signing year-round deals to play for all of an ownership group's various teams is often discussed with alarm, yet the status quo is arguably worse. As players hop from one IPL-linked franchise to another, any sense of loyalty or identity becomes diluted and the sense of rivalry is undermined.
A maze of different drafts, auctions and salary caps makes a 12-month contract with a franchise an illusion. There is no doubt that the Ambani family - who spent Tuesday night watching from the Prince of Wales Room in The Oval's grand old pavilion - would love to sign Pooran for Mumbai Indians, but he was retained on a lucrative contract by Lucknow Super Giants.
It leaves players like Pooran in the awkward scenario of representing one of their employers against another. It is a situation that no serious sport would allow, given the obvious conflict of interest - not that you would have known that was the case in May, when Pooran belted eight sixes for LSG against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium.
"Obviously, it's nice to represent them again," Pooran said, after winning the opening game of the Hundred season for MI London. "At the end of the day, I'm a professional. I represent Lucknow [in the IPL]. I represent Mumbai in the leagues outside. For me personally, I'm getting an opportunity to do what I love to do, which is to play cricket."
Pooran had only arrived in London on Monday morning: perhaps his efforts to win the game so quickly - he belted 58 not out off 22, icing the chase with 16 balls unused - were informed by his desire for a good night's sleep. He continued some impressive form, having hit 13 sixes in a 31-ball hundred for MI New York at the Oakland Coliseum last week.
"Franchise cricket is not for everyone," Pooran said. "Not all international players who do well [are] going to come on the circuit and do well. It's very difficult. I just came from Dallas, where the pitches were really poor. The conditions were 100 degrees [farenheit]. It's difficult: batsmen like flat tracks. You have to go and try to figure it out.
"Coming into different environments, some environments are not professional enough," he added. "It's easy to be turned off; if I can say, it's easy for us as players to just go on a vacation in those leagues. But again, to survive in these leagues, you just have to be motivated and be disciplined because, again, it's not for everyone."
It is hard to watch Pooran bat like this without feeling some regret that, at 30, he is a retired international. His decision to call time on his West Indies career was a product of cricket's changing landscape and should prompt introspection from those running the game: it cannot be a reflection of a healthy sport that a player in his prime no longer plays for his national team.
But this is a world of which English cricket has become a part: private investment and the introduction of IPL satellite teams means that the Hundred has become a stop on the global circuit, where the same faces, names and colours blur into different combinations at each destination. Tuesday night marked the first step, and there is no turning back now.
