Two former MLB players are leading a push to bring the sport that made them famous to India, Pakistan and the Middle East.
Former New York Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera and ex-Cincinnati Reds shortstop Barry Larkin are the faces behind the United International Baseball League (UIBL), which plans to bring professional baseball to an area of the world more associated with another bat-on-ball sport: cricket.
The league is to begin with an inaugural showcase tournament in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in February next year. Further plans for the location of teams and their personnel are still in the works.
Photo: AP
The league said in a statement that the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East region are home to 2 billion people “and more than 900 million of those people are fans of cricket.”
“While baseball exists in small pockets across south Asia and the Gulf ... there is an absence of professional leagues and a void of deep, grassroots player development expertise and infrastructure,” the statement said. “The UIBL team is looking to change that.”
Panama-born Rivera spent his entire career with the Yankees over 19 seasons from 1995 to 2013, primarily as a relief pitcher and closer. He made 13 All-Star Game appearances, won five World Series, is MLB’s all-time leader in saves with 652 and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2019.
“I’m very grateful to be a part of the UIBL’s exciting mission to inspire 2 billion new fans to fall in love with baseball,” Rivera said. “We believe there is an amazing opportunity to educate, inspire and entertain those cricket fans, and open their hearts to an exciting and culturally relevant form of baseball.”
The Cincinnati-born Larkin was a career-long Reds player in his hometown. He won an MVP award, a World Series title, was selected to 12 All-Star teams and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2012.
Larkin said that teaching prospective baseball talent the basics was a strong part of the new league’s mission.
“We truly believe that player development has to start at the grassroots level,” Larkin said. “I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life focused on helping young people learn the fundamentals of our great game, as well as the fundamentals of great leadership. That’s the beauty of baseball — when you teach it the right way with the right conviction, you can help young people succeed on and off the field.”
The new league said that while baseball’s fan base has an average age of 57, cricket fans are among the world’s youngest sports fans, with an average age of 34. Nowhere is cricket more popular than in India and Pakistan.
The league said that it has plans to “innovate and evolve” baseball “to help capture and engage this younger, more diverse demographic.”
Without going into specific details, it also said that the league would “introduce rule changes, create original game-play concepts, and bring to life a more immersive viewing experience for fans at the stadium and home.”
The inaugural showcase tournament to be played solely in Dubai is to include four franchises representing different parts of the world.
The league said that franchises, managers, coaches and rosters would be announced at a later date.
The baseball would be competing for attention with a new franchise T20 cricket league launching at about the same time in the United Arab Emirates.
Star cricketers from around the world are likely to join the six-team International League T20.
Taiwan’s Tai Tzu-ying on Saturday crashed out of the BWF All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, with South Korea’s Se Young-an denying the world No. 3 Tai a chance at a fourth All England title. In a replay of their semi-final showdown last year, the world No. 2 Se again beat Tai, saving four match points in a thrilling deciding game to prevail 17-21, 21-19, 24-22. Tai won the women’s singles title in Birmingham in 2017, 2018 and 2020. In the three times the two superstars faced each other prior to Saturday, Tai, 22, had only come out on top once, when
California-born Lars Nootbaar had never played for Japan before the World Baseball Classic, but he has become so popular in his adopted country that sales of pepper mills have shot up in tribute to his trademark celebration. The 25-year-old outfielder — the first player born outside Japan to represent the country at the tournament — mimics twisting a pepper mill after each hit to show he wants to “grind out” a win for his team. The celebration has become a smash hit during Japan’s games in Tokyo, with Nootbaar’s teammates jumping on the bandwagon and fans bringing pepper grinders to the stadium. Nootbaar
LAST ONE STANDING: The world No. 3 was the only Taiwanese left in the tournament, while there were upsets in the men’s singles and the women’s doubles Taiwanese badminton ace Tai Tzu-ying on Thursday defeated Thailand’s Busanan Ongbamrungphan 21-19, 21-12 to reach the quarter-finals of the BWF All England Open in Birmingham. Tai, the world No. 3, needed only 40 minutes to close out the round-of-16 matchup at the Utilita Arena. In the opening game, the Taiwanese shuttler established an early 10-5 cushion, before an aggressive Ongbamrungphan fought her way back into the tie, winning nine straight points to take a 10-14 lead. The pair traded the lead to bring the scores to 18-19, but Tai held her nerve to close out the first game. After a 2-2 tie early in
When Taiwan lost to Cuba 7-1 at the World Baseball Classic (WBC) on Sunday, it was an opportunity missed. A win would have sent the team to the quarter-finals in Tokyo. Instead, the loss gave Taiwan a 2-2 record, the same as the other four teams in Pool A, but they finished last because of tiebreakers. So, was the team’s performance a success or a failure? The 2-2 record would suggest somewhere in between, but two baseball experts, National Taiwan Sport University (NTSU) associate professor Kung Jung-tang and veteran commentator Tseng Wen-cheng, gave Taiwan’s WBC performance a resounding thumbs-up. “The team’s offensive showing was
RSS